Updates

Mike Rispoli, director of News Voices: New Jersey, discusses the critical importance of local news.

New Jersey has a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to create more informed communities and a more engaged democracy in cities and towns across the state.

Free Press Action Fund is calling on the New Jersey legislature and governor to invest a portion of the state’s FCC-auction windfall in a fund to bolster local news.

The sale of station-owned airwaves to shore up cellular networks offers a rare opportunity to invest in local news and public information needs.

New Jersey has sold off two regional public-broadcasting television licenses for $332 million in a nationwide auction of broadcast television spectrum.

As soon as the FCC announced results of its broadcast spectrum auction, public-TV stations began to speak out about plans for their proceeds.

Free Press Action Fund is urging New Jersey lawmakers to use the state’s auction revenues to give communities the news and information they need.

During a recent public hearing convened by the Assembly Budget Committee, Mike Rispoli, a former statehouse reporter, asked lawmakers to consider establishing a news consortium using $100 million from the anticipated auction proceeds.

New Jersey auctioned off a public treasure — several of its public-TV stations — for possibly hundreds of millions of dollars, with little public debate or any idea of what the governor plans to do with the money. But it’s not too late to seize this moment and use this money to transform New Jersey into the national leader in digital public media, local journalism and civic technology.

TRENTON — Free Press Action Fund on Wednesday called on the New Jersey legislature to use money from the auction of the state’s public-TV stations to create the New Jersey Civic Information Consortium, a joint initiative with four of the state’s leading universities to invest in community-information needs.