Addressing a crisis as complex and fast-moving as the disappearance of local news will take coordinated efforts across many fronts. The array of innovations being tried by newsrooms around Oregon, highlighted in the previous section, are important for local journalism to become more relevant, trusted, and sustainable. The disruption of the traditional business model for local journalism, particularly for-profit newspapers, means that newsrooms can’t solve the problem by doubling down on traditional approaches. According to the former COO of EO Media Group Heidi Wright, “We have to redefine the industry.”
But newsroom adaptation and innovation are only one part of the solution—one leg under the stool. News organizations and their advocates most likely cannot solve the local news crisis alone. Rebuilding the local news ecosystem will require the combined efforts of many sectors, including philanthropy and public policy. According to Wright, the solutions to Oregon’s local news crisis “need to be philanthropic, legislative, and with sustainable business practices.”
Press Forward: Philanthropy and Local Journalism
Perhaps the biggest news in journalism circles in the past two years has been the announcement of Press Forward, a national coalition of funders led by the Knight Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation, that aims “to raise significant new resources for local news, and lower the transaction costs to both funders and grant seekers in the process.” Animated by a vision to “re-center local journalism as a force for community cohesion, civic participation, and government accountability,” Press Forward’s opening promise was to leverage $500 million in grants, representing “the largest coordinated philanthropic effort to support local news.” By June of 2024, the coalition had expanded from 22 original funders to over 60, and Press Forward Local chapters had been established in more than 20 states. By early 2025, the initiative reported it had invested $200 million, including $20 million given to 205 small news outlets around the country. As of this writing, three outlets in Oregon had received Press Forward funding: The Eugene Weekly, the Lund Report, and Underscore Native News.
Despite broad agreement with its goals, Press Forward has been criticized for moving slowly, emphasizing public announcements over concrete action, a complex structure, lack of transparency, and not adequately prioritizing equity (though Press Forward’s messaging emphasizes equity as a key goal). Another challenge has been convincing state-level philanthropies to join the effort to invest in bolstering local news—in part because supporting the private, for-profit sector (the majority of media in the United States) is not often a priority for public-minded philanthropies; in part because “local philanthropists haven’t traditionally seen news as a civic need.” Meanwhile, Press Forward encourages the creation of local chapters to provide ongoing infrastructure for philanthropic support for local news, but creating those chapters can be time-consuming and may ultimately be seen as misspent effort that could end up diverting funds from newsrooms. And while Press Forward’s $500 million goal is impressive, it almost certainly is not enough—highlighting again that multiple, coordinated efforts will be required to reverse the decline in local news—although its proponents argue that initial pledge will “help generate billions more in new support for local news.”
Still, Press Forward has helped catalyze and focus national attention on the local news crisis and helped normalize the idea that philanthropies have an important role to play in addressing it. As one Press Forward funder put it, they have recognized that “the media’s financial crisis threaten[s] to undermine almost everything else we [are] trying to accomplish.” Press Forward has also articulated key principles for rebuilding local news, including the importance of community-centered journalism that builds trust; resolving longstanding inequities in how and for whom local news is produced; and developing public policy to support local news.
Despite some initial efforts, as of this writing no Oregon Press Forward chapter has been created. There has been some important philanthropic support for local news here in Oregon, including investments by the Oregon Community Foundation (including KOBI-TV in Medford, the Cottage Grove Sentinel, the Newberg Graphic, and Uplift Local); by the Roundhouse Foundation (which has supported outlets including Curry Coast Community Radio, Oregon Arts Watch, Underscore Native News, and Uplift Local), and the Ford Family Foundation.
Public Policy to Bolster Local News & Information
Today, an increasing number of advocates for local news agree that public policy has a critical role to play in creating better chances of success as newsrooms work to adapt to a radically changed environment. According to a recent Tow Center report, given the breadth of the local news crisis, “Fresh approaches are needed to tackle issues such as sustainability, funding for journalism, and meeting information gaps.” Policy makers in the U.S. have an historical reluctance to wade directly into the question of whether the public is being well-served by the media, and “market-led approaches have historically dominated media policy” in this country. However, these analysts say, “there is evidence of market failure in this arena” that “will therefore require a new approach.”
Recently, legislatures around the country have begun taking unprecedented steps to help address the local news crisis. Here we highlight some of the main approaches being tried or proposed around the country, including here in Oregon during the 2025 legislative session. Readers should note that some of the approaches discussed here have been bundled together in state legislation around the country.
Journalism scholarships & fellowships. One approach to addressing newsrooms’ diminishing ability to pay for reporters is to incentivize and subsidize people—young people in particular—to work as local journalists. This approach is being tried in several states. In 2024, the Illinois legislature passed a bill creating a scholarship program for in-state students studying journalism at in-state colleges, tied to a commitment that they work in the state for at least two years after graduating. New Mexico appropriated $125 million to expand the Local News Fellowships and Internships program run by the New Mexico Local News Fund, which is a Press Forward local chapter, and the Department of Communication and Journalism at the University of New Mexico. These moves followed a 2022 act in California allocating $25 million over three years for a journalism fellowship program run by UC Berkeley’s journalism school, and a 2023 bill in Washington state appropriating $2.4 million for a journalism fellowship program at Washington State University. According to a report out of WSU, the Murrow News Fellows Program aims to address the fact that many local news outlets “lack the resources to hire and retain journalists at a competitive rate.” The program pairs promising early career reporters with news organizations, “funding their salary for two years so they can report on civic affairs and critical information needs.” The program plans to place three six-month fellows in Olympia for the state’s 2025 legislative session, in addition to the 16 two-year fellows it has placed in newsrooms statewide.
Matching the educational role of colleges and universities to the critical resource gap that has left many local newsrooms unable to afford reporters to cover their communities adequately is one way to bolster local news, but it has some challenges and limitations. In particular, it remains to be seen if these programs can help create a sustained talent pool, as younger journalists may opt to leave local newsrooms, especially those in rural and other underserved areas, for higher paying jobs in bigger cities and out of state. And while state-supported scholarships and fellowships can help build the pipeline of trained local journalists and plug employment gaps in newsrooms, these programs do not address the larger, more systemic problems in today’s local news business.
Public notice and government advertising mandates. A non-tax approach being tried is to require that more governmental advertising dollars be spent with local media (rather than national or social media). A somewhat similar approach is to change regulations around how public notices are published. In Oregon, the debate has focused on whether public notices should be allowed to be posted in digital and legacy media alike. These notices represent “a small but steady revenue source for outlets like mine,” according to Quinton Smith of the Lincoln Chronicle, but they also represent a critically important revenue stream for the newspapers of record that have historically had the exclusive responsibility to publish such notices. SB437, introduced in the Oregon 2025 legislative session and sponsored by Lincoln County Senator Dick Anderson (R), would allow publication of public notices in any “news publication,” rather than specifying newspapers. As of this writing, the bill’s fate was uncertain, with digital publications supporting the bill and advocates for the newspaper industry lobbying against it.
Tax exemptions and tax credits. Another public policy approach to the increasingly tough economic challenges for local newsrooms is creating targeted tax credits and exemptions. One idea proposed in the 2021 federal Local Journalism Sustainability Act (LJSA) in the U.S. and adopted in Canada in 2019 is to provide consumer tax credits for subscriptions or donations to local news—an idea also pursued in at least three states around the country and proposed here in Oregon. SB 57, sponsored by Sen. Cedric Hayden (R, District 6) in the 2025 legislative session, proposed an income tax credit for subscriptions to media news outlets and donations to certain journalism organizations.
The consumer tax credit idea is attractive for those concerned about public funding of media, because it would support news outlets indirectly through the mechanism of consumer choice, rather than through direct subsidies. But research suggests the idea is not very effective in delivering much-needed revenue to newsrooms. “Interviews with experts and data released by the Canadian government,” according to one report, “suggest this credit has been largely unsuccessful in driving new subscribers to publications and is even viewed by some as a giveaway for affluent individuals who already subscribe to news.” Another tax-related policy approach being tried in Washington state is an exemption for newsrooms to business and operations taxes.
In contrast to subscriber tax credits, evidence suggests that payroll tax credits for newsrooms, particularly for adding new reporters, can be an effective approach. This idea, also a provision of the now-stalled federal LJSA, was implemented in Canada in 2019. Research there indicates that although it has not been without some problems, such as delays in disbursing funds, it has generated meaningful revenue for local newsrooms. Here in the US, in 2024 the Illinois legislature approved a refundable payroll tax credit to support hiring and retention of local reporters (up to $15,000 per current journalist and $25,000 for adding new reporters). And New York state instituted $30 million per year for three years to support employment tax credits for news outlets in the state – the largest such investment so far nationally. As the local news advocacy organization Rebuild Local News puts it, “Properly defined, an employment credit places the incentives in the right place: hiring of reporters….while being compatible with the First Amendment and the need to protect the editorial independence of news outlets.” And for small newsrooms in particular, offsetting some of the costs of hiring reporters could make a big difference. As Tim Trainor of the Redmond Spokesman told us when we asked about the challenges facing small newsrooms, “even with 1 reporter we could do infinitely more than we can with zero.”
Another related approach is a tax credit for small businesses to advertise with local news outlets. This approach, proposed or enacted in at least three states so far (Colorado, Maryland, and Wisconsin), would work to offset the significant loss of advertising that has undermined the traditional business model of many local newsrooms.
Stemming the loss of locally owned media. The tax incentives described above can help offset or restore some lost revenue to local newsrooms. But even if pursued aggressively, they seem unlikely to be able to address the larger forces disrupting local news ecosystems, particularly the rapid loss of locally owned media to larger media conglomerates. As reviewed above, those conglomerates, particularly hedge funds and private equity firms, usually implement significant cuts in reporting jobs and in actual local news production, eroding the connection between communities and the media that cover and serve them. Oregon seems to be in a better situation than many states, since the main out of state owners of Oregon newspapers say they do not have the same business model as private equity buyers, but to the extent that local ownership keeps the news more locally grounded, the vulnerability of local outlets to purchase by large conglomerates is worth addressing.
One step is to require advance public notice of sales of media outlets to out-of-state entities. Illinois enacted this policy in 2024, requiring newspapers to give a 120-day notice when they seek to sell to an out-of-state company. Proponents of this approach say the goal is “to give other businesses, newspapers and nonprofits the opportunity to acquire the publication, preserving local journalism and preventing its sale to a private equity firm.” The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Steve Stadelman, argued that “Local journalism is the heartbeat of our communities, shining a light on local issues in a way corporate media isn’t interested in. By requiring notice prior to the sale of a local news organization, we are creating an opportunity to protect the livelihoods of employees and preserving the continuity of community-focused journalism.” Stephen Waldman of Rebuild Local News also argues for federal tax incentives to encourage community-based buyers and incentivize current local owners to sell to local buyers rather than conglomerates. California legislators are considering a similar bill (AB-611), the “Keep News Local Act”, that would require advance notice of intended sales or transfers of assets and give employees of the outlet right of first refusal to purchase part or all of the outlet or its assets.
Redressing tech platform harms. In addition to losses of local media to large conglomerates, another systemic threat to local news is the digital platforms that have become an unavoidable conduit to reaching audiences even while they siphon off advertising dollars and leverage local news content without compensating local news outlets. According to a recent study, “The tech giants have argued that news is not essential and that publishers are lucky to have their platforms driving traffic to their sites, which can then convert that traffic into subscriptions.” But news producers are estimated to lose nearly $14 billion in revenue annually to technology companies like Google and Meta. Another research report contends that “by keeping the cost of goods sold (news) down, Google and Meta have grown rich off the advertising revenue they reap from attracting the world’s eyeballs to their sites.” Real news is valuable content that platforms can’t easily create for themselves. Yet “big tech companies have resisted paying traditional licensing and copyright fees and are not forthcoming about providing audience traffic and impression numbers. What payments they make are meager and often through small grants or private arrangements with major outlets.”
So, an increasingly attractive idea is to make big tech compensate local media for the value they extract from them. Such efforts have ramped up worldwide in recent years, and in 2024, the state of California tried to do so as well, in two pieces of legislation. SB 1327 provided for refundable tax credits to newsrooms, with extra subsidies going to smaller newsrooms, and would have imposed a tax on the largest technology companies for “data extraction transactions. AB886, the California Journalism Preservation Act (CJPA) would have provided an estimated $500 million for local news by requiring platforms to “compensate digital journalism providers…for accessing [their] internet websites.” However, in last-minute negotiations prompted by Governor Gavin Newsome, Google struck a “public-private partnership” deal, pledging $172 million for local media outlets and—surprisingly to some observers—to support AI development. The deal was controversial. According to Editor & Publisher, to some it was seen as “a way to forestall threats by Google and Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, to block California newsrooms from their platforms.” State Senator Steve Glazer, who was excluded from the negotiation despite being a co-sponsor of the legislation, told reporters the deal “seriously undercuts our work toward a long-term solution to rescue independent journalism.” According to Glazer’s office, “Despite the good intentions of the parties involved, this proposal does not provide sufficient resources to bring independent news gathering in California out of its death spiral.”
Making big tech pay for the value their platforms extract from local news is a compelling idea for addressing one of the biggest drivers of the local news crisis. As of this writing, Oregon’s neighbor to the north is trying a similar approach, with their Senate Bill 5400. At the same time, California’s experience illustrates some of the challenges of that approach. Platforms like Facebook and Google are uniquely positioned to both make and to break connections, and in striking the “Wicks deal,” (colloquially named after Assemblywoman Buffy Wicks who negotiated the Google deal), Google wielded the threat to break the connection between Californians and local news content. The digital and political power of major platform companies cannot be underestimated.
But there are other, substantive challenges as well. The effects of such efforts—whether they take the form of legislation or of direct agreements with tech companies—on small media outlets of all kinds needs to be carefully considered. Smaller news outlets may lack the legal resources to bargain effectively in arbitration proceedings to hammer out compensation, for example. Other methods of distributing proceeds may also overlook small, rural, and minority-serving outlets unless explicitly designed to benefit such outlets. Creating a new potential revenue stream for local newsrooms is a critical step, but formulaic approaches to distribution can end up benefitting larger newsrooms much more than smaller ones.
In 2025, Senator Khanh Pham (D, District 23) joined with co-sponsors from the Oregon Senate and House of Representatives to sponsor SB 686. Modeled to some extent on California’s CJPA, early versions of the bill sought to make tech companies choose to either pay online news providers directly for accessing and displaying their content, or donate to an Oregon Civic Information Consortium, also provided for in the legislation, that would give grants to local information providers from revenues generated. This second provision, to create a consortium to disburse some of the funding, seeks to address the concerns described above about how to distribute proceeds in an inclusive, deliberative, and equitable way, replicating elements of New Jersey’s Civic Information Consortium, established by that state’s government in 2018 “to benefit the state’s civic life and meet the evolving information needs of New Jersey’s communities.” As of this writing, SB 686 is still taking final shape. (Full disclosure: The Agora Journalism Center offered consultation in early stages of developing SB 686, and if established, the consortium would be housed at the University of Oregon).
The Role of Public Policy to Address the Information Needs of Communities
As these examples illustrate, support is growing in various parts of the country for government interventions to help strengthen local news. Representing that shift, the national League of Women Voters (LWV) recently voted to endorse the idea “that local news is a public good” because, the organization believes, healthy local news is critical to democracy and to empowering voters. By a vote of 859-63 at its 2024 convention in Washington, D.C., the league adopted a position stating that “it is the responsibility of the government to provide support for conditions under which credible local journalism can survive and thrive.”
The support of civic organizations like LWV is both leading and reflecting a shift in thinking. Within an industry that historically has viewed any kind of government involvement as anathema, journalists and those who advocate for local news increasingly view public policy as a necessary leg in the proverbial three-legged stool. While innovation in news production, distribution, and business models is critically important, and the philanthropic sector is waking up to the game-changing role it could play in bolstering local news, there are certain actions government and only government can take to, for example, incentivize local news organizations to remain locally owned or provide tax relief to help newsrooms add local reporters.
A larger question looming in these efforts is, What is the objective of media policy? Is it merely to “preserve” legacy journalism, as is suggested in the titles of bills like the California Journalism Preservation Act? Or is the purpose to better ensure that the public’s information needs are being met? Addressing this question forthrightly may lead to different policy choices.
While finding ways to help for-profit newsrooms regain economic sustainability in a radically changed marketplace is an important objective, we may also need, according to journalism scholar Jacob Nelson, to “separate the conversation about how to make journalism better from how to make journalism profitable.” Especially as non-profit and semi-publicly funded newsrooms (e.g. public radio) are playing an increasingly vital role in local news ecosystems, the journalism funding paradigm may need to shift. The hard truth is that many communities may lack the economic base to support recreating local news as it once existed. As the historical model of advertising-supported news outlets has faltered, new models are needed to pay for the production of quality local news.
Increasingly, analysts, advocates, and journalists themselves believe that the scale of the local news crisis demands new thinking and fresh approaches. As Sue Cross, former executive director of the Institute for Nonprofit News (INN) puts it, “We’ve lost 60 percent of our newspaper journalists in this country in under 20 years, and tens of thousands of reporting jobs just during the pandemic.” The journalism crisis is “not just [about] digital transition,” and “it’s not cyclical. This is a long-term change.” Steering a path toward steady, sustainable, trusted local news – delivered through a variety of media – is the critical challenge of this moment.
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