Yesterday, Reps. Dan Newhouse (R-WA) and Ann Kirkpatrick (D-AZ) reintroduced the “Local Journalism Sustainability Act” to create tax credits designed to empower citizens, small businesses, and newsrooms to sustain and support local news. 

Thanks in part to the efforts of Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA), the coronavirus relief bill includes a provision that will make thousands of local journalism outlets newly eligible for emergency federal support under the Paycheck Protection Program.

Today, reports indicate that even as more people turn to local journalism for information on the growing coronavirus threat in their communities, local media operations are being shuttered across the nation. Public Knowledge contends that unless Congress steps in immediately to help fund local journalism, communities across the country risk losing one of their key sources of accurate information about what citizens need to know and do in response to the pandemic.

Public Knowledge believes it’s vitally important to protect Americans’ access to trustworthy sources of news. Some of our team can quote from memory the numbers related to news deserts and laid-off reporters in this country. And we are advocating on multiple fronts for policies to sustainably fund newsgathering, mitigate the impact of disinformation on digital […]

This blog post is part of a series on communications policies Public Knowledge recommends in response to the pandemic. You can read more of our proposals here and view the full series here. “When the next pandemic strikes, we’ll be fighting it on two fronts. The first is the one you immediately think about: understanding the disease, researching […]

This piece was originally published in The Seattle Times. You can view it here on seattletimes.com. Local newspapers are experiencing a steady decline in traditional print-advertising revenue as technology giants like Google and Facebook profit from the digital ads that support their massive information distribution platforms. It’s no wonder that the major media association has […]