ALBANY — Nationwide, locally owned newspapers and news sources are closing at an alarming rate. In New York, lawmakers and local news advocates have their eyes on a bill that they say would go a long way to help stop the bleeding.
On Wednesday, members of the Empire State Local News Coalition, a group of more than 150 print and digital newspapers, stood outside the Legislative Correspondents Association offices in the state Capitol to draw attention to a bill they say would help save local newspapers: the Local Journalism Sustainability Act.
Johnson Newspaper Corp., the owner of the Watertown Daily Times, is a member of the coalition and supports the Local Journalism Sustainability Act.
The Senate version of the bill, which is also included in the Senate one-house budget proposal, would provide one year of payroll tax credits to news sources that hire local news journalists, up to 50% of the first $50,000 of each reporter’s pay, capped at $200,000 per outlet. Print and online newspapers with fewer than 100 employees, and broadcasters with fewer than 100 employees per station, would be eligible for the credit. A maximum of $20 million in total tax credits can be applied statewide, and the credit expires a year after implementation. An Assembly version of the bill would extend the time frame to five years.
Both chambers’ versions have bipartisan support from all regions of the state.
Zachary Richner, director of Richner Communications, which operates a number of local newspapers on Long Island, and who is the founder of the Local News Coalition, said the credit is a needed shot in the arm for a struggling sector of one of New York’s most important industries.
“Local news in New York is in crisis,” Richner said outside the state Capitol press corps offices. “That’s not hyperbole; 50% of newspapers in New York state have closed since 2004, and 25% of all New York counties are now news deserts.”
As local newspapers have shuttered, few if any news sources have come in to replace them, leaving local communities and their governments, schools, businesses and people without a reliable source of information at home.
“Nobody else is covering your village board meeting, your high school soccer game, investigating potential corruption in city hall,” Richner said.
The result is more political polarization as local information streams become less professionalized, lower voter turnout and less participation in the political process, Richner said.
And papers that have not yet closed continue to struggle to hire and retain talented journalists to cover their communities. Newsrooms are emptier than ever before, and stories go unreported.
Sen. Brad M. Hoylman-Sigal, D-Manhattan, who sponsors the bill in the upper house, said that nationally more than 43,000 journalists have lost their jobs since 2005, and in New York, there are now 50% the number of reporters than there were in 2005.
“Our state is plagued with these growing news deserts,” Hoylman-Sigal said. “There are 15 counties that have only one local news source, and news deserts are spreading. There are 52 million people in this nation living in counties with only one local news source, and 3 million living in places with no local news at all. This is a full-blown crisis.”
The senator said this credit is not much different from the myriad tax credits provided to other small businesses and industries in New York, but would go a long way to help keep the news companies afloat and encourage their community residents to subscribe and invest in their publications.
A co-sponsor of the Senate bill, Sen. Monica R. Martinez, D-Hauppauge, said she has seen students across her home district on Long Island express interest in a career in journalism, but are worried because they see the crisis the industry is in.
“I have been meeting students across my district, and many of them are looking into journalism, but they’re afraid that they may not even have a job when they come out of school,” she said. “This is something that we need to save.”
While the Senate version of the bill has passed through committee, it has not been scheduled for a full Senate floor vote, and the Assembly version has yet to advance to a committee vote. The Senate version is also included in that chamber’s “one-house” budget proposal, which is the basis from which Senate Majority Leader Andrea A. Stewart-Cousins, D-Yonkers, will negotiate with Gov. Kathleen C. Hochul and Assembly Speaker Carl E. Heastie, D-Bronx, for a final, single budget bill to be passed in early April.
Hoylman-Sigal said he is confident that the Senate’s inclusion of the bill means it will be a topic of discussion among the leaders, and noted that Stewart-Cousins previously worked as a local news journalist.
“There’s broad support,” he said.