Analysis: California News Outlets Stand to Lose Almost 9 Million Visits Annually if CJPA Passes

Traffic worth almost $1.2 million annually; analysis shows impact in each state Senate District

• California is considering a news link tax, the California Journalism Protection Act. It’s designed to help local news outlets, but a similar policy in Canada resulted in 120 million visits being lost annually, with the average outlet losing 1.2 million visits annually.
• Assuming platforms would respond the same way to CJPA as Canada’s law, the 107 California-based news outlets in my sample would lose an estimated 9 million clicks, worth over $1.2 million annually.
• This new analysis shows how much each California news outlet will likely lose in traffic and revenue due to platforms responding to CJPA’s passage.

Background

California is considering AB 886, the California Journalism Preservation Act (CJPA), this legislative session. CJPA would require Google and Meta to pay a percentage of their advertising revenue to news outlets if they continue providing links to news content.

Chamber of Progress has previously opposed the bill, citing concerns that large national outlets would benefit at the expense of small organizations and that hedge funds would benefit more than small newspapers. The legislation intends to support local journalism but could result in significant unintended consequences for newspapers across California.

The bill designates that newspapers be paid based on the number of journalists employed to create news content for California audiences. All news publishers and journalists creating news content for Californians are eligible for the bill.

Canada passed similar legislation, which resulted in Meta removing all news content from the country. My recent analysis of Canada’s legislation found that Canadian newspapers lost 120 million visits annually due to Meta’s removal of news content.

Meta has threatened to similarly remove news content in California if CJPA passes.

In this analysis, I examine the impacts on newspapers if platforms responded to CJPA like they responded to Canada’s law. Specifically, I estimate the potential traffic losses to news outlets if Meta removes news content from its platforms for Californians.

If the law results in outcomes similar to those in Canada, newspapers will see declines in website traffic. Additionally, the revenue loss from the decline in traffic may outweigh the potential benefit provided to these newspapers under the bill. In Canada, my estimates indicated that newspapers ended up worse off once the law went into effect.

Estimated Traffic Loss

If CJPA, with its potential to cause similar impacts as Canada’s law, is implemented, California newspapers could face a significant loss in traffic. To gauge the potential size of this traffic loss if Meta were to block news content on its platform, I utilized data from Similarweb, a company that provides web traffic data.

To ensure a comprehensive list of news outlets in California, I employed a multi-faceted approach. This involved using information from the Library of Congress’ Directory of Newspapers, a list of California newspapers from Wikipedia, and data from our previous analyses. I then collected data on the traffic to each newspaper’s website to estimate the potential traffic loss. While Similarweb had complete information for 107 newspapers in California, in many cases, there was insufficient data for reliable traffic reporting.

The Similarweb platform provides data for all social media traffic a website receives, including the percentage of traffic from each social media platform. Meta’s news circulation platforms include Facebook, Instagram, and Facebook Messenger. Using that information, I calculated Meta’s referral traffic to each website in my sample.

I estimate the potential lost social media traffic due to Meta blocking news in California to be 4.5 million visits annually for these 107 papers. Note that the total list of newspapers I searched for information on in Similarweb is just over 400 newspapers. Thus, this estimate underestimates the actual amount of traffic lost. Papers receiving large amounts of California traffic from Meta’s platforms, including the San Francisco Chronicle, The Sacramento Bee, and The Los Angeles Times, lost the most traffic.

In my previous analysis of Canada’s C-18 journalism legislation, I found that overall traffic declined more than social media traffic, likely due to an exposure effect, meaning that if someone was accessing news through a Meta platform, they may also visit the website directly due to being exposed to the website through Meta’s platform. Then, when Meta blocked news content on the platform, websites lost traffic from Meta. However, they also saw a decline in traffic overall because the person was no longer exposed to the news website and eventually forgot to go there, even through direct navigation. Thus, Meta’s withdrawal resulted in losing two visits — one via Meta and one directly.

In my analysis of C-18, I found that Meta traffic declined by roughly 5 million clicks, and overall traffic decreased by 10 million clicks. This exposure effect can potentially explain the decline in overall traffic. If the same pattern holds in California and CJPA passes, the loss of 4.5 million visits from Meta’s platforms suggests a loss of 9 million visits in overall traffic.

Decreased traffic often leads to reduced revenue for newspapers since many rely on advertising models for revenue. A 2024 PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) study estimated the value of a website visit for different types of newspapers. They found that the value of a click was $0.05 — $0.07 for national news publishers, $0.13 — $0.15 for regional news publishers, and $0.11-$0.13 for news publishers catering to local audiences. The sample of newspapers included in this analysis consists of a mix of regional and local newspapers. As such, I use a value of $0.13 per click to estimate the potential lost revenue for these news outlets.

The table below presents information on estimated annual lost traffic and the potential associated revenue losses by newspaper.

Overall, these 107 newspapers could lose almost 4.5 million visits and $584,000 in annual revenue from Meta traffic annually. In total traffic, they could lose almost 9 million visits and $1.2 million in annual revenue. It is important to note that more than 107 newspapers exist in California. Thus, my estimate likely underestimates the actual amount of lost traffic and revenue.

Estimated Traffic Loss by Senate District

Next, I examined the traffic losses by State Senate District. To do this, I recorded the zip code for each newspaper in my sample. Then, I used the 2023–2024 Legislative Session Zip Code Directory from the California State Senate. This directory provides a list of zip codes with the Senate District for each. Matching zip codes with newspapers allowed me to examine which areas will be most affected by CJPA.

The table below presents potential lost traffic and revenue by State Senate District.

As shown in the table, District 11 in San Francisco stands to lose the most, with an estimated decline of almost 1.4 million total visits annually. This district is the home of the San Francisco Chronicle. District 8, which encompasses a large portion of Sacramento County and includes the Sacramento Bee, is estimated to lose over 1.3 total visits annually. District 24, the home of The Los Angeles Times, will lose an estimated 1.1 million visits annually.

District 11’s lost traffic is valued at almost $179,000 annually. District 8 could lose over 164,000 on an annual basis and District 24 could lose the equivalent of over $141,000.

Conclusion

CJPA intends to help support journalism in California; however, the legislation will likely result in adverse unintended consequences for newspapers in the state. Similar legislation passed in Canada resulted in Meta removing news content from its platforms. As a result, Canadian publishers suffered large traffic losses and likely lost revenue. California news outlets will likely suffer the same fate if similar legislation passes in California.

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