Local News Is Disappearing. Lawmakers Need to Ask the Right Questions

The Trump administration is attacking independent journalism. Congressional Republicans are angling to defund public media. Billionaire media owners are kowtowing to the White House. And the relentless march of corporate media consolidation carries on, leaving behind a trail of hollowed-out newsrooms and shuttered outlets.

These threats to journalism are happening at a time when our communities could really use reliable information. Amid mass deportations, clear signs of democratic backsliding, cuts to key federal services and skyrocketing costs, Americans find themselves in a fundamentally broken news environment riddled with misinformation and polarizing content.

If there’s a silver lining, it’s that the existential peril of this moment has forced a long-overdue reckoning among media and community leaders: We cannot build the media system our communities and democracy need without policy change. Lawmakers across the country are taking up bills aimed at supporting local news, with more than a dozen states and cities weighing some sort of legislation.

This surge in activity is desperately needed. High-quality local news is a true public good, and the market simply can’t produce enough of it right now. But there’s a problem: Policymakers are embracing proposals that would channel money to many of the same corporate forces that have done so much to destabilize our media system and democracy in the first place.

We have ample evidence that our current media system — dominated by corporate chains, hedge funds and wealthy commercial broadcasters — is top-heavy and too often beholden to shareholders instead of community members. On the flip side, we know that building a diversified and sustainable local-media system will require a strong stable of independent newsrooms, nonprofit outlets, ethnic media outlets and public-media options. These are the sectors of our media system that know their communities best and tend to put mission over profits.

So why have Democratic lawmakers in California, Illinois, New York and Oregon all introduced legislation that could further entrench the power of the Sinclairs, the Gannetts and the Foxes of the world while marginalizing — and in a worst-case scenario, harming — smaller independent publishers? And how can we reorient these policy debates so that lawmakers don’t cement a media hierarchy that isn’t serving our ailing democracy?

Targeting support for the most essential kinds of journalism

Any local-news bill should start with a core question: How can lawmakers address the most pressing community-information gaps while laying the groundwork for a sustainable, diversified media system? When public dollars are in play, policy should be tailored to the public interest.

Many recent policy debates, though, start from a different question: What can lawmakers do to “save” journalism? This framing even comes through in the names of the bills themselves: A bill in Oregon, introduced in January 2025, is called the Oregon Journalism Protection Act (SB 686). Its inspiration, a hotly debated bill in the California legislature in 2024, was called the California Journalism Preservation Act.

But it’s worth asking: What are lawmakers trying to protect and preserve? The advertising model that propped up newspapers for decades is gone and isn’t coming back, even if the tech giants’ grasp over the advertising market is broken up. Readers have exponentially more content options in the internet age than they did in the print-newspaper industry’s heyday, so there’s little chance that money will come flooding back into the pockets of local outlets at the scale needed. And it’s crucial to note that even in print journalism’s prime, the press underserved or maligned many rural, low-income, BIPOC and non-English-speaking communities.

What’s more, a small number of commercial giants — corporate newspaper chains, corporate broadcasters and hedge funds — dominate the journalism industry today. A small handful of companies own more than half of all newspapers in the country, and just three conglomerates own 40 percent of local-TV stations. Research makes it abundantly clear that this runaway consolidation is poisoning the local-news landscape — and in turn, weakening our civic health. Meanwhile, in the shadow of Big Media, independent community newsrooms, small publishers, nonprofits and ethnic media outlets — the outlets closest to their communities and best equipped to meet their needs — are left to struggle over a meager pool of resources.

Policymakers should aim to correct this imbalance. We desperately need to diversify our media system by weakening the grasp of corporate behemoths and investing in independent community journalism, with the goal of making strong local news broadly accessible to the public.

But that isn’t what we’re seeing. In California last session, and now in Oregon, lawmakers embraced a top-down approach that was first championed by Rupert Murdoch in Australia before finding strong support from media conglomerates in the United States. These bills would force platforms like Google and Meta to compensate news publishers for sharing and accessing their content.

Tech platforms certainly have a role to play in addressing our community-information crisis. But as we’ve seen in Canada and California, this kind of mandatory bargaining approach encourages platforms to stop sharing news content entirely. Meta did just that in Canada, resulting in troubling outcomes: Hyperpartisan and misleading content is thriving, and small independent publishers reliant on social-media traffic are suffering. There’s legal thorniness, too: A report from UCLA legal experts notes that this approach is also likely to raise “numerous legal obstacles” if enacted in the United States. What’s billed as a quick infusion of support for an ailing industry could get mired in the courts for years.

Many recent bills would also distribute money to journalism outlets based purely on the size of their newsrooms, with broad definitions for eligibility. There’s absolutely a need to buoy jobs in a field decimated by layoffs, newsroom closures and consolidation. But without guardrails, the largest amounts of money would flow into the pockets of the biggest media entities. And because corporate broadcasters and chains are usually eligible to receive benefits under these proposals, already-profitable entities like Sinclair, Nexstar, Gannett and Alden Global Capital would find themselves atop the list of big winners — while smaller community-based entities would be left fighting for crumbs. 

A blueprint for impactful legislative action

There are many different ways to support local news, including grants, tax credits, government-advertising set-asides and fellowship programs. Public grantmaking is the surest bet — this approach focuses on filling the information gaps that the market alone won’t address, it stands up to legal scrutiny and there’s strong proof of concept. But no matter the legislative vehicle, it’s crucial that lawmakers and engaged community leaders ask themselves a few core questions to ensure that policy solutions point in the right direction. 

• Does the legislation use community-information needs as a north star? Communities don’t just need more journalism — they need high-quality local journalism that performs a public service and supports civic engagement. 

• Would the proposed actions move us toward a diversified media system that limits the power of corporate forces? Lawmakers should aim to democratize media power and put local news back in the hands of the people. Policy solutions should uplift community-centered models of journalism both new and old — independent community newsrooms, nonprofit outlets, public media, ethnic media and worker-owned cooperatives. 

• Would the legislation put money into the pockets of corporate broadcasters? This is a red flag in any local-news bill. Corporate broadcasters are doing just fine financially, and every dollar that goes to Sinclair or Nexstar could instead support a locally rooted independent outlet plugging the gaps corporate consolidation has left behind. 

• Are there any unintended consequences that might harm small publishers, or any legal questions that will slow enactment? The mandated bargaining approach that Oregon lawmakers are considering could encourage Facebook and Google to stop sharing local news entirely, and faces major legal roadblocks. The crisis facing community journalism is too urgent to allow for policy proposals that could both harm smaller publishers and get stuck in the courts for years. 

There’s way more to effective local news policy, of course. The Media Power Collaborative’s policy agenda, which more than 60 groups and individuals in the media and democracy spheres have endorsed, lays out a thorough set of values and concrete options to guide legislative interventions. But this set of questions could be a useful shorthand tool to make sure a policy proposal is oriented correctly.

And right now, too many bills stumble under the weight of these questions. The stakes of this moment — both for independent journalism and the civic health of our communities — couldn’t be higher. As local-news policy debates ramp up across the country, lawmakers will look at the models advanced today as inspiration for their efforts tomorrow. It’s vital that lawmakers seeking to support local media and informed communities get this right.

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