It has been an enormous week for journalism funding in the US. Or relatively it might have been an enormous week. The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, a bill designed to supply a limited time ‘secure harbor’ for some news organizations to collectively bargain with platforms for payments, notably Google and Meta, was alive on Monday and dead by Tuesday evening. It lasted less time than a British Prime Minister, or a warm lettuce, tacked onto the must-pass National Defense Authorization Act defense spending bill. The explanations for its rapid removal lie in a robust bi-partisan and well-funded lobbying effort to kill it. Repeating what was an unsuccessful tactic against similar laws in Australia, and again in Canada, Meta said they might don’t have any option but to drag news from Facebook if the Bill passed.
The regulatory landscape within the US suggests that a Bill just like the JCPA can be difficult to pass. Google and Meta are each very energetic and wealthy lobbyists, who targeted the provisions of the Bill in each this and former iterations. Surprisingly perhaps many journalists and a few journalism trade groups also went on the record to oppose the bill, corresponding to the Local Independent Online News publishers, who work closely with Google to distribute their journalism program funds. A good variety of the trade and civil society organizations opposing the laws are themselves recipients of not less than some funding or close business partnerships from Google or Meta over the past five years. The dearth of clarity in who funds which organization makes the evaluation of potential legislative fixes within the US particularly difficult to gauge.
But with the JCPA dead, with Meta withdrawing from just about all journalism funding activities, and the choice potential federally mandated funding sources unlikely to pass in a Republican controlled House, the query stays who or what is going to support the gaps in local journalism funding? In 2023, after a temporary respite in 2020 to 2022, the economic omens are again looking bleak for news journalism. This week even the Recent York Times guild members went on strike and the Washington Post, owned by multi billionaire Jeff Bezos, announced the closure of its Sunday Magazine with attendant layoffs. Every week earlier CNN and Gannett had also announced sweeping staff cuts. But because the recognized skilled field of journalism shrinks, the fabric which is filling gaps grows.
Within the run as much as the 2022 Midterm elections, the Tow Center increased its work on taking a look at the political and dark money funding of local news outlets. This work began in 2019 and has only grown since. For the primary time on this election cycle one of these ‘pink slime’ news broke cover in high profile campaigns as Tow fellow Jem Bartholomew reported from the Illinois gubernatorial race. Our computational journalism research fellow Priyanjana Bengani unearthed previously unknown links to a dark money news network from a much wider right leaning network of funders. Tow Fellow Sarah Rafsky even conducted research to have a look at the effect these low quality titles have on audience perceptions of the news (answer, people find it harder than one may think at first sight to inform the difference between these titles and regular news outlets). Although initially a right wing tactic for political engagement, the model for targeted local news with a political end in mind is moving across the political spectrum. Nancy Scola’s in-depth reporting for Wired in regards to the formation of the Courier Newsroom chain that grew out of a Democratic PAC underlined just how widespread one of these media operation could turn into. Our own Sarah Grevy Gotfredsen hung out within the Courier’s Detroit operation the “Gander” in an interesting report. As Grevy Gotfredsen notes, the technique of reporting for a Courier outlet looks remarkably like political campaigning :
“The newsroom has borrowed the political tactics of ‘microtargeting,’ whereby particular messages are tailored to unique slices of the population in a bid to spice up turnout at voting booths. Employees at Courier’s headquarters are liable for testing whether content produced by its local newsrooms is successful in moving voters in a desired progressive direction.”
The formatting and targeting of specific stories to specific voting demographics and the imperative to measure results by moving the voting needle is a standard theme between all similar publications who operate this model. One striking aspect of Courier’s business model is that nonetheless different its transparency and journalism may be from those on the correct, corresponding to Metric Media, the business model is identical: Money from interested parties who seek a specific political consequence.
Within the Semafor media newsletter this week Max Tani described how Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is eschewing traditional media, even on probably the most mainstream of platforms corresponding to The View, for just a little known media outlet Florida Voice, which carries an unfiltered direct to audience coverage. That is nothing latest, however the failure of viable alternatives in local markets raise the query whether we’ll see a dramatic shift within the local media landscape over the following two years to the purpose where the hyper partisan press is a bigger presence than legacy news.
If the numerous congressional efforts to attempt to support some type of independent public interest reporting fail, then the political consequences for what happens within the local news market may very well be as profound because the economic effects on an already ailing news industry.
Announcing the Local News Disinformation Network
In recent times, now we have chronicled how political disinformation and thinly-veiled propaganda, particularly in contested battleground states, has remade itself to seem like legitimate local news. The danger to journalism seems clear. We’re assembling a gaggle of newsrooms across the country which are enthusiastic about helping to watch this trend and lift awareness of it amongst their readers and viewers. As a member of the Local News Disinformation Network, you’ll:
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Have access to research and reporting from CJR and Tow which will relate to your coverage area
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Be connected to other newsrooms across the country facing similar issues, when it comes to disinformation, propaganda, or threats
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Be invited to share insights, and even stories, which may very well be distributed without cost to other members of the network
We imagine it is a critical moment for local journalism: disinformation and political propaganda are increasingly targeting local politics at a time when many newsrooms are stretched as never before. Our hope is that by working together, we are able to increase our capability to fight back. This effort is patterned after Covering Climate Now, a groundbreaking collaboration that CJR launched three years ago to encourage more and higher coverage of the climate crisis.
That project now encompasses 600 newsrooms around the globe. Our goal here is rather more targeted but, we imagine, just as necessary. In the event you are a newsroom that may prefer to join us or are enthusiastic about more information, please reach out to Mathew Ingram on the Columbia Journalism Review.
Emily Bell is a frequent CJR contributor and the director of Columbia’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism. Previously, she oversaw digital publishing at The Guardian.
