What The Hell America!

What would a local media system that prioritizes working and middle classes over corporate profits and the interests of billionaires look like? A new public policy agenda released this week has some ideas.

The Media Power Collaborative, which released its policy framework on Tuesday, describes itself as an organizing space for media workers and their allies in research, activism, and education. The collaborative grew out of a peer networking group — now known as the News Futures collective — and is part of the media reform group Free Press. If you remember the much–discussed Roadmap for Local News that argued that the future of local news is “civic information,” this is the same crowd.

The local news industry, as Nieman Lab readers well know, has been devastated by ad revenue losses, layoffs, and profit-driven corporate ownership over the past couple of decades. Over that time, local newspapers have shrunk faster than a new crop of local news sites and nonprofit newsrooms have been able to grow. Through the policy agenda, policy tracker, and a new network of regional coalitions, the Media Power Collaborative wants to push the public policy conversation toward support for some of the more community-minded local media that’s emerged to fill that gap.

There’s a lot of overlap between the Media Power Collaborative and organizations like Rebuild Local News, which has its own policy menu and legislation tracker, and other media industry groups. But unlike, say, the News Media Alliance — which replaced the Newspaper Association of America and primarily represents commercial news publishers — the Media Power Collaborative and its aligned groups are orientated around meeting local information needs.

In some communities, that could mean supporting a local nonprofit newsroom or an independent civic-minded daily newspaper. In others, it might mean supporting someone who might not even call themselves a journalist but regularly covers school board meetings or local immigration raids. The Media Power Collaborative is more likely, in other words, to focus on local media ownership, civic information hubs, and public schools or libraries than returning legacy newspapers to 2005 staffing levels.

Free Press often hears from local journalists and organizers who’ve been asked to support a specific bill or initiative being considered in their state or city. Mike Rispoli, senior director of journalism and civic information at Free Press, said local practitioners often want to engage in policy issues, but aren’t always confident in their ability to determine if their newsroom or civic media initiative stands to benefit. Rispoli also described the Media Power Collaborative’s policy agenda as an attempt at longer-term thinking.

“While I think things like tax credits can be important, we also know that’s a bridge proposal at best. I think what the MPC policy agenda is [asking] is, ‘What should we be building a bridge to? What is the actual thing that we want?’” Rispoli explained. “The end goal of these policies should be more informed communities, more engaged communities, and — as a byproduct of that — supporting news and its production.”

The Media Power Collaborative agenda highlights local news and information as a public good that deserves “robust public funding” whether it comes from a legacy newsroom or not. From the report:

Just like safe roads and strong public-education systems, public-service journalism and civic information are public goods that benefit entire communities. Unfortunately, the market is critically underproducing these public goods: Estimates of what it would cost annually to bridge current community-information gaps range from $1 billion to $10 billion or more. Even with promising new philanthropic investments in local news and civic media, public funding is essential to addressing a deficit of this magnitude and building toward a community-centered local-news system.

The agenda also reflects a widespread frustration with public policy proposals that would benefit legacy newspaper chain owners such as Alden Global Capital. This has been a consistent theme for civic information advocates though by no means limited to them.

“Corporate media and hedge funds and broadcasters — these are folks who have the ears of lawmakers. They have resources to lobby. And so every starting place in the conversations about media policy is something that protects their interests,” Rispoli said. “A bit of it is saying this [civic media] part of the field deserves a seat at the table. But a bit of it is saying we should be the ones setting the table.”

Some of these corporate owners have gutted local newsrooms, Rispoli noted, and yet they’re “the ones at the front of the line with their hand out, saying, ‘we should be getting money from the government.’”

The agenda attempts to address some of the biggest questions in local news policy, including how to protect editorial independence; which local news orgs should qualify for assistance; and, given finite public funding, which communities should be prioritized. Limiting public funds to legacy news organizations does not address their history of underserving communities of color as well as rural and low-income groups. It seems more likely to reinforce existing news deserts and information gaps. Candice Fortman, a John S. Knight Fellow at Stanford and former executive director of Outlier Media, was one of the 10 members that met over the course of 2024 to craft the public policy agenda.

“Many minds are working to build the agenda for the future of local news and how we will protect and fund reporting,” Fortman said. “This initiative, however, is about more than just saving local news; it’s about rebuilding it in a way that is equitable, sustainable, and deeply rooted in community needs.”

The Media Power Collaborative’s policy agenda calls for “a transformed media system” that is “backed by robust public funding with sturdy firewalls in place to preserve editorial independence.” Some of the specific proposals include: 

• Establish public grantmaking to support local news and civic information with direct public funds that prioritize the parts of the media system “that are most engaged with their communities, most adept at providing public-service journalism, and least resourced compared to their large commercial counterparts: community-rooted publishers, independent newsrooms, nonprofits, and ethnic-media outlets.” The group also endorses establishing grants, tax credits, and vouchers that prioritize noncommercial local media outlets.
• Administer public funds through “a nongovernmental independent body” that is “overseen by a diverse, multi-stakeholder, nonpartisan board — and neither political appointees nor media owners should make up a majority of this board.” 
• Expand affordable access to local news and critical information. “The government already has a wealth of tools at its disposal to improve access to essential civic information. Even as lawmakers work to support journalists, they can also invest in libraries as civic-information hubs, support the expansion of affordable broadband access, provide funding for information hotlines, create community-gathering spaces and ease communities’ ability to access vital public data.” (The agenda sees a special role for community colleges as hubs for local journalism and information.)
• Create statewide vocational, scholarship, and fellowship programs that support journalists. Similar efforts are already underway in California, New Mexico, and Washington.
• Tie public funding for commercial news outlets to “community-positive factors” such as union neutrality and “an emphasis on serving unmet information needs.”
  
• Incentivize local ownership and investment over allowing corporate chains and hedge funds to snap up media outlets from struggling local owners.
• “Break up the stranglehold that corporate media chains and Big Tech platforms have over the information landscape.” Specifically, the Media Power Collaborative endorses a tax on ad revenues at Amazon, Facebook, and Google that would redistribute the funds to local news outlets and civic information initiatives. The agenda also mentions federal action to stop anti-competitive mergers, reinstating media ownership limits, and enforcing existing media ownership rules.
• Address existing gaps in local news ecosystems. The agenda proposes media literacy across all ages and demographics; requiring governments to prioritize outside media contractors that reflect the communities being addressed in PSAs and other public messaging; and protecting local journalists from SLAPP suits and undue government influence.

The full agenda is here.

No one is saying any of this will be easy. Those estimates for closing the local news gap are enormous and it’s unlikely public funding alone is the answer. There are also important and fair questions about editorial independence and giving anyone — never mind the government — the power to decide which journalists and news organizations will receive taxpayer dollars.

Perhaps more pressingly, though, is that although majorities of both Democrats and Republicans approve of local media, the political polarization and harsh rhetoric at the national level has trickled down to state and local policy conversations. Funding for public media — already lower in the U.S. than in many other democracies — is under threat. Even paid news subscriptions for government workers have been criticized and exploited for political purposes in recent weeks. Federal legislation seems off the table for now, and we’ll have to see how many states and cities will see proposals to support local news become law. 

I noted one other ominous sign. The Media Power Collaborative’s policy agenda mentions that research tells us low-income communities, communities of color, immigrant communities, and rural communities are the most underserved by our current local media system. The report includes a link to research published by the FCC. The report, which was live in late December, now shows a “page not found” error message.