Literature Review: Media Policy Options for Local News in the USA
Potential remedies for tackling the erosion of local journalism
This is the first part in a series of work-in-progress articles outlining the background to the local news crisis in the United States and what can be done about it. This analysis will continue to be developed, added to and refined, prior to the publication of a more comprehensive report on this topic later in the year.
Background and Context
The American news media industry has faced a number of major structural challenges over the past two decades. Print and some digital-only outlets have been most affected by these developments. These difficulties have been driven by changes to the media’s traditional advertising-led business model, alongside evolving consumer behaviors, as well as diminishing trust in journalism and intentional news avoidance.
In the local news arena, in contrast to the structural challenges faced by non-broadcast outlets, TV’s revenues and viewership have remained fairly constant (Pew 2021), as has local public radio (Pew 2023), although the audience for those who get their news “often” from these sources has begun to change in recent years (Forman-Katz and Masta, 2022).
Nevertheless the impact on print outlets — especially at a local — is particularly significant given their continued agenda-setting role, described by Rasmus Kleis Nielsen (2015) as “keystone media” and their role in producing the bulk of original local reporting (Napoli and Mahone, 2019)
“There is no media company — commercial, nonprofit or public — that isn’t experiencing some version of this,” wrote The Texas Tribune’s CEO Sonal Shah in an email to staff in August 2023, after the company laid off staff for the first time since it was founded in 2009 (Fu, 2023).
Although we have seen the emergence of a raft of new, mostly digital, entrants onto the media scene, this has been accompanied by major reductions in the number of journalists working in newsrooms across the USA. These impacts have been felt most acutely across the newspaper industry (Walker, 2021), with local newsrooms being hit especially hard. This has potential consequences for accountability and watchdog reporting, community cohesion, as well as the wider news media ecosystem.
How to best address these challenges (and the opportunities that digital affords), especially in the local journalism space, has vexed policymakers, funders, researchers and the wider industry; and it’s these questions that we turn to next (Malone, 2022; Djinis, 2022; Waldman, 2023).
The Role of Media Policy
There’s no standard definition of media policy, an area at the nexus of politics, technology and economics (Papathanassopoulos, 2016). Typically, with a focus on rules and regulations, media policy seldom touches on issues of power and possibility, although this can — and should — be part of its focus (Freedman, 2014). Although many of the primary drivers for policy discussions have their roots in digital and technological realities, turning policy ideas into practice is shaped by political and institutional dynamics and realities (Papathanassopoulos, ibid). They are also informed by, often abstract, views on the relationship between the state, society and media (Puppis and Van den Bulck, 2019).
Summarizing some of these arguments, Jessica J. González, co-CEO of the advocacy group Free Press, noted two key purposes, “a media policy function that mitigates the harms of the existing corporate media structure, and another one … about rebuilding and restructuring our media system so that it serves the public good.” Meanwhile, Victor Pickard, the C. Edwin Baker Professor of Media Policy and Political Economy at the University of Pennsylvania, has further argued that media policy is wrapped up in the wider role of government. It’s a “social contract” with communities, he says, which seeks “to maximize positive externalities and minimize negative ones” (both quoted in Radcliffe and Mathews, 2023).
Typically, media policy conversations in the USA are focused on growing concerns about democratic and information deficits (Moore, 2014; Ardia et al, 2020; Knight Foundation 2020). These fears are long-standing (Durant, 1995; McChesney and Hackkett; Norris, 2012) and have only hastened in an era of misinformation (Schiller and Robertson-Hardy, 2022), further changes in media habits and business models (McChesney and Pickard, 2011) and concerns about democratic backsliding (McDevitt, 2022)
Underpinning these media policy conversations, a range of research exists that demonstrates the impact — and potential value — of news media and local journalism. These efforts have highlighted both the information needs of communities (Hobbs, 2010; Waldman, 2011) as well as the links between media consumption and both political (Livingstone and Markham, 2008) and civic engagement (Barthel et al, 2016; Molyneux, 2017), and the media’s role — especially at a local level — in community building (Hess and Waller, 2016; Lauterer, 2006).
Many of these ideas were captured in 2012 by the Communications Policy Research Network. In response to a call from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) they produced a detailed literature review and report (Friedland et al, 2012) summarizing the different types of information communities require.
The study identified eight categories of “critical information needs,” specifically: emergencies/risks, health/welfare, education, transportation, economic opportunities, environment, civic information, and political information (CPRN, 2012: v-vi). If these information needs are not being provided, this may mean that intervention is needed by media policymakers to address the situation.
Building off this, Napoli et al. (2016) used the CPRN’s 2012 framework to create a methodology to assess how effectively, or not, local media ecosystems are meeting these community needs.
Similarly, Abernathy’s earlier work identified (2014) some of the key democratic roles that community/local newspapers in the United States (can) fulfill:
- The newspaper remains the primary source for local original reporting;
- “Defines the public agenda… through strong reporting and commentary” (Cross qtd. in Abernathy, 2014, p.24);
- Encourage economic growth and commerce;
- Fosters a sense of geographic community;
- Helps us understand our vote (pp.17–29).
Allied with these earlier studies, we are also seeing an emerging conversation (although not necessarily in its current form) about the role of journalism as a public good (Pickard, 2021; Holliday, 2021; UNESCO, 2022) and the recommendation that journalism be funded in the same way as other forms of critical community infrastructure. That’s especially true when it comes to local news and information, where we are seeing growing calls for media policy intervention (Galperin, 2017; Aspen Digital & Diara-Jepris Townes, 2022).
As the University of Pittsburgh historian Lara Putnam put it in a series of tweets (2020), “There is no magic unicorn carrying messages to would-be voters. There is infrastructure: or its absence.”
Summarizing some of these discussions, primarily through the lens of news deserts and the need for public funding to help address them, Walters (2023), an assistant professor in the Department of Journalism and Mass Communications at Washington and Lee University; and a former reporter and editor at the Associated Press, notes:
Research has found consistent relationships between the prevalence of poverty and news deserts.
This is both an equality and public health problem, one that will never be resolved until American society recalibrates how it thinks about journalism. It must be considered as much an educational institution as the local elementary school, as essential to public health as a community hospital, as worthy of government investment as a Main Street business district.
Without this shift, our news ecosystem will continue serving largely those who are most advantaged; it will leave vulnerable communities in the dark; and it will further drive a wedge between people who have access to honest news and those deluged only with lies and propaganda.
Media Policy possibilities
Media policy can play a role in ensuring that the information needs in communities are being met. Doing this also means that local media systems are working to deliver the democratic functions/benefits that a healthy democracy needs. This potential function of media policy is especially important in the absence of news provision or a reduction in its capacity, whereby community information needs– in part, or in full — may be unmet.
Changes in media provision — manifest in changes in ownership and reduced local coverage, alongside the outsourcing and centralizing of key journalistic functions such as layout/design, print production and copyediting — can all reduce the potential benefits (and accuracy) that local journalism can have. However, it’s also worth remembering that some communities have long been historically underserved (Usher, 2023) and have therefore failed to benefit from some of the potential benefits that local news and journalism can potentially help to deliver.
As a result, some voices in policy discussions are urging policy-makers (and philanthropists) to avoid propping up the status quo (Nielsen, Gorwa, de Cock Buning, 2019) and to focus on diversifying the news media (Bourgault, 2021) and making journalism more sustainable (Forum on Information & Democracy, 2021). At the same time, well-considered policy can also support the information needs of a wide range of communities by helping to address long-term imbalances (French, 2016) in terms of coverage (Patel, 2022), representation (Masullo et al, 2020) and newsroom diversity (Jones, 2016; Gottfried et al, 2022; Gabriel, 2022), as well as media ownership and leadership (Sur, 2020).
Regardless of the issues that policymakers identify as their priorities, there are multiple tools that policymakers can deploy to help deliver these goals.
Speaking to the Irish Future of Media Commission, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen (2021) from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism outlined seven media policy options for bolstering independent professional journalism, namely: direct and indirect subsidies for private news media; systemic support for resources needed by all news organizations, such as journalistic training; , competitive grants for specific public interest editorial projects; the creation and public funding of independent public service media; easing the creation of non-profit news organizations — or the conversion of existing ones into non-profits; and lowering the costs of doing investigative reporting by making government information more transparent and easily obtained.
Similarly, a report for the Tow Center for Digital Journalism (Radcliffe and Mathews, 2023), based on a series of five webinars exploring this topic, outlined eight solutions as well as other considerations such as the need to protect the independence of journalism from funders and politicians, as well as “rooting interventions through an equity lens.” These ideas focused on taxing big tech and making the platforms pay; encouraging greater levels of philanthropic support; enabling new structures and business models; leveraging the tax code; unlocking government advertising; investing in public and community media; funding specific acts of journalism; giving smaller and independent players a seat at the table.
Industry groups have also put proposals on the policy table. Some of the most high-profile include those emanating from the NGO Free Press and the Rebuild Local News Coalition.
Founded in 2020, the Rebuild Local News Coalition offers a range of potential policy remedies (described as a “policy menu”) that is “geared toward ensuring that public policy is nonpartisan, content-neutral, platform neutral, and future friendly.” Among the ideas that it has put forward include payroll tax credits to hire and retain local reporters as well as tax credits for local news subscribers/donors and advertisers, as well as efforts to maintain or restore local newspaper ownership.
Free Press’s proposals include establishing a public trust funded by a tax on digital advertising (Karr and Aaron, 2019). They advocate that these funds are managed locally by bodies such as foundations, community boards, state universities and public libraries, organizations they believe are better situated to identify community information needs and the allocation of resources to meet them. Following the murder of George Floyd, they also launched the Media 2070 project, which charts (Torres et al, 2020) how the media has harmed Black people in America and calls for media reparations to address multiple long-term inequities.
Variants of these ideas can be seen in numerous reports and reviews that have been conducted around the world, including the UK Cairncross Review (2019), reports focused on the Republic of Ireland (2022), Scotland (2021) and earlier work in the USA (2011).
These various reports justify the need for fresh media policy interventions by charting many of the same changes to the media ecosystem outlined earlier in this literature review. Recurring themes that emerge through these reports and reviews include the importance of using media policy to support public interest journalism and local news, media literacy, relationships with platforms, as well as discussions about media business and revenue models.
Many of these reviews have failed to move beyond the page. However, in some markets, these types of policy ideas have been put at least partially into practice. This includes the creation of New Zealand’s Public Interest Journalism Fund (PIJF) and the News Media Bargaining Code in Australia.
Now closed, the PIJF provided national government funding of $55 million New Zealand dollars (about $39 million in U.S. dollars) over three financial years (2020–21, 21–22, 22–23). It gave funding to 73 projects, 219 roles and 22 industry development projects. By April 2023, more than 60,000 pieces of news content were created, enjoying over 134 million total views.
Described as “transitional support,” the PIFJ was designed to help newsrooms recover from the impact of COVID-19 on their business while ensuring that public-interest journalism continued to be delivered. It defined this as ‘journalism that contributes to a person’s ability to function as a valued and informed member of the communities in which they live and/or work’.
In Australia, the duopoly of Google and Facebook were forced to negotiate deals with news publishers in order for their news content to feature on their platforms. These arrangements are worth more than $140 million ($200 million AUD) a year (Schiffrin, 2022).
This move has not been without its critics. Researchers have pointed to the exclusion of smaller companies from the Code as well as the undisclosed commercial-in-confidence nature of agreements (Fisher et al, 2021), lack of redistribution of resources away from bigger news media players (Media Reform Coalition, 2023) the ability of platforms to use these discussions to avoid regulation, as well as protect and strengthen their sovereignty (Heylen, 2023) and whether other approaches such as a levy on platforms might offer a more sustainable solution (Dwyer et al, 2023).
Although the US media ecosystem differs from others around the world — particularly in terms of its focus on market economics and the comparatively low level of funding for public media –(Benton, 2022) concepts of American exceptionalism should not mean that ideas from elsewhere should be excluded. They can be remixed, adapted and learned from (Benson and Powers, 2011). After all, policy makers and funders around the world are grappling with many of the same systemic issues that can be seen in the United States.
Barriers
“The main issue right now in my view is not lack of options,” Nielsen (2021) contends. “It is the lack of action.”
“Despite the scale and scope of change in media use and the media business the last few decades, for a long time the political norm has been to choose inaction, which is why in many countries we still have 20th century media policies for a 21st century media environment.”
One long-standing proponent for intervention, Victor Pickard, professor of media policy and political economy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication, has consistently argued (2021) not just for public funding, but also a shift away from the commercial model (2022) which in many cases is currently dominated by hedge funds (Winters, 2021), but also for local communities to determine where monies for journalism should go (2022b):
“Journalism’s transitional moment could be transformational — but only if we reinvent our news media, not resuscitate failing commercial models. As a starting point — one that may take many years to actualize — newsrooms must be governed by journalists and local communities instead of absentee capitalists who treat journalism merely as a commodity, not a public service.”
In the USA, potential barriers to action include attitudes towards subsidies, historical unwillingness to adequately fund and support public media (Benson, Powers and Neff, 2017), resistance to intervene in markets and perceptions of market failure (SOURCE), concerns about government intervention and compatibility with the First Amendment (Lawrence & Cook 2014), political reluctance to take on Big Tech (e.g., through antitrust laws), the challenges of defining who should receive public funds (e.g., large commercial outlets like Gannett, as well as online-only independent and non-profit outlets) and where efforts should be focused — both geographically and in terms of organizations and audiences.
The distribution of journalism and information, as it always has been, is also uneven (Usher, 2021). As the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy acknowledged (2009) although “the digital age is creating an information and communications renaissance… it is not serving all Americans and their local communities equally. it is not yet serving democracy fully.” (p.xi). That sentiment remains true today (Menand, 2023; Reich, 2022; Kalb, 2022), just as it did at the start of the 21st century (Jensen, 2001) and arguably always has done since at least the dawn of the mass media era (Hutchins Commission, 1947).
Napoli (2020) also notes that there has been resistance to research into this topic, in some quarters, for fear that it might “represent a Trojan Horse to government regulation of the press.” As he adds, if you already hold this view, then policy interventions can easily be seen in the same light.
“Looking back, one could argue that these successful efforts to thwart any meaningful federally funded research into the state of local journalism and the information needs of local communities only helped to exacerbate the current crisis, by prolonging an information vacuum that foundations and university researchers have subsequently worked to fill.”
Alongside this, there are recurring questions across multiple markets, including the USA, about the role of media policy and the relationship between incumbents/legacy media (Hermida and Young, 2021) and promoting innovation (Sjøvaag and Krumsvik, 2018). These concerns have been accompanied by discussions about the impact of changes in media ownership and consolidation (Hess and Waller, 2020; Pickard, 2018), concerns about the power of media titans to shape the policy agenda (Gaber, 2011), as well as conversations about how to pay for any potential interventions (Franklin, 2012) and whether they should sunset after a period of time (Edmonds 2020, commenting on the proposed Local Journalism Sustainability Act).
Collectively these examples demonstrate just some of the wide breadth of issues and considerations, that policymakers must contend with. Arguably, however, they are all sub-facets of a bigger question: should public monies be used to help fund journalism?
Although Downie, Jr., and Schudson (2009) called for journalism to be funded in a manner akin to other areas that deliver wider societal benefits, we remain some way off this reality.
“American society must take some collective responsibility for supporting independent news reporting in this new environment — as society has, at much greater expense, for public needs like education, health care, scientific advancement, and cultural preservation — through varying combinations of philanthropy, subsidy, and government policy.”
As a result of a lack of progress for funding journalism along the lines Downie, Jr., and Schudson described, it may be that some form of additional government funding will be required in the form of direct funding, tax breaks, or other routes such as government advertising. It is these possibilities that are now being explored with more vigor at the federal and state levels.
Recent Media Policy Efforts
The economics of the American journalism industry, just as it was around the world, was hard hit by the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic (Radcliffe, 2020; Silverman, 2020; Posetti, Brown and Bell, 2021; Nel and Milburn-Curtis, (2020–21).
Although these fears (Ahmed, 2020) proved to be overblown, the pandemic nonetheless had a substantial impact in terms of furloughs, layoffs, cutbacks and the shuttering of news outlets (Hare, 2022; Tow Center, 2020).
This disruption triggered serious conversations about the potential need for government intervention. Previously this idea had met considerable resistance due to fears it could undermine journalistic independence and trust among audiences. Reflecting on this shift, Dan Kennedy, a Professor of Journalism at Northeastern University, explained (2021) that “the situation is so dire that once-unthinkable ideas need to be on the table.”
The early stages of the Biden presidency included incorporating support (Tracy, 2021) for the salaries of local journalists — in the form of a payroll tax credit — as part of the large-scale Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (typically referred to as the Build Back Better Act).
The proposed legislation was designed to be platform-neutral enabling broadcast, print and digital operations to be eligible for it. As AP’s Seung Min Kim noted, this was potentially worth $1.67 million over a 10-year period. In order to delineate what news outlets would be eligible, it contained provisions (pg.1957–1966) about the maximum number of employees an eligible company could have, as well as the distance (50 miles) that journalists could live (50 miles) away from the area they were reporting on.
In the face of criticism (e.g., Wall Street Journal Editorial Board, 2021) and further negotiating, this part of the bill was dropped. However, it’s worth noting that earlier iterations of this legislation had been more expansive, for example including tax credits for businesses that advertised with local media, an idea that had previously been floated in the Local Journalism Sustainability Act. That proposal, which also failed to be passed, also included a non-refundable tax credit for consumers of up to $250 annually to incentivize individual subscriptions to local news organizations.
A similar fate to these earlier bills has also befallen (Bell, 2022) the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA). This legislation too has also undergone several iterations, none of which have joined the statute book.
As the JOLT Digest, a project of the Harvard Journal of Law & Technology, explained (Shah, 201), the purpose of this bill was “to create a four-year safe harbor from antitrust laws for news content creators so that they can collectively negotiate with online content distributors about the terms on which their content may be distributed.” Put another way, the JCPA is designed, as one industry group in favor of the bill describes it, “to ensure that news publishers are fairly compensated by Big Tech for the value of their content” (News Media Alliance, n.d.)
Its detractors, however, can be seen on both sides of the aisle. Free Press has argued that a “link tax” is likely to drive clickbait, by incentivizing publishers to focus on pageviews. Arguing that “Exchanging Links for Cash Is No Way to Save Journalism” (Karr, 2023) they argue that “a bargaining code model built on such clickable metrics loads the news cycle with stories that scream the loudest at the expense of accuracy and depth.” Others have noted that current proposals exclude smaller publishers while favoring legacy publishers (Krewson, 2022) and the precedent this may set for other forms of content (Withrow, 2023).
“While it is true that newspapers and other journalistic outlets have suffered massive revenue loss from the shift in advertising dollars to social media and search ads, it doesn’t mean the beneficiaries of this online advertising revolution owe reparations to media companies — just as auto manufacturers owe nothing to farriers or carriage builders.” (Josh Withrow, fellow in Technology and Innovation, R Street Institute)
Meanwhile, the libertarian Cato Institute contends that this type of “industrial policy” is “incompatible with free markets” (Bourne and Chiu, 2022) and points out that the proposals overlook the value that platforms bring to the content they share. “This is about politicians taking money from businesses they don’t like and giving it to companies they consider virtuous,” the economist Ryan Bourne (2022) wrote.
Moving Forward: Breaking the policy deadlock
Despite these failed attempts to secure federal funding, many of these ideas continue to feature on various legislative agendas.
In July 2023, several of these ideas emerged in the Community News and Small Business Support Act. The proposed legislation once again proposes a payroll tax credit to hire and retain local reporters. Tax credits would also be available for small businesses (those with fewer than 50 employees) that advertise with local media outlets (Peck, 2023).
Alongside these federal, nationwide, proposals, we have also seen a growing number of initiatives taking place — or being proposed — at both state (Buni, 2023) and city levels (Rebuild Local News, n.d.). Many of these pieces of state legislation have taken key elements from failed federal plans, such as tax credits for businesses to advertise with local outlets (Wisconsin, Oregon and others) as well as tax credits for subscriptions (Massachusetts).
Furthermore, efforts to support and fund journalists include funding for fellowships (California, New Mexico) and payroll tax breaks (New York State), preferential tax rates (Washington) as well as setting aside a percentage of government advertising for local media, often community and ethnic media (e.g. Chicago, New York City). More recently, Massachusetts lawmakers proposed an update to the mechanisms that fund community media, by levying a fee on streaming services and the revenues they make in the state (Henry, 2023).
These efforts have been accompanied by a range of research and legislative investigations into why this type of support is needed. We have seen the proposed Commission to study journalism in underserved communities in Massachusetts (2019; (its creation was passed into law in 2021), the creation of a Local Journalism Task Force in Illinois, as well as explorations of further state-level interventions in New Jersey, Oregon, Colorado and elsewhere.
Although the challenges faced by local news and local journalism have been documented for some time, it’s “…only now, in this advanced stage of the crisis, individual states in the U.S. are potentially moving forward with legislation to begin studying the problem,” Napoli notes (2020).
These political moves have been supplemented by further research highlighting issues at a local and individual state level (e.g. Lawrence et al 2022), as well as calls for investment and support for sectors such as civic media (Green et al, 2023), the creation of a new congressional commission to recommend a way forward (PEN America, 2019) and the emergence of new coalitions, such as the National Trust for Local News, a nonprofit dedicated to keeping local news in local hands, and the aforementioned Rebuild Local News which aims “to turbocharge the campaign to strengthen democracy with public policies to support the local press.”
Meanwhile, in early 2023 the federal Government Accountability Office published a report, based on a 2-day workshop with 40 experts from a range of backgrounds wherein “experts advised that the primary goal of public policies should be to preserve the function of journalism rather than specific local news outlets.”
Arguably leading the way in this arena is the state of New Jersey. The New Jersey Civic Information Bill became law in 2018, creating the New Jersey Civic Information Consortium. The bill granted the Consortium — which consists of the College of New Jersey; Montclair State University; New Jersey Institute of Technology; Rowan University; and Rutgers University — $20,000,000 in the fiscal year the bill becomes law, and $1,000,000 annually thereafter, harnessing funds (Sefton, 2017) generated (Marcus, 2017) from a spectrum sale. With these monies, the consortium is charged with “advance[ing] research and innovation in the field of media and technology to benefit the State’s civic life and evolving information needs.”
According to their website, by September 2023, the Consortium had provided $5.5m in funding across 81 grants. This included $2,870,696 in grants for its 2023 funding cycle, and $600,000 for revenue sustainability coaching, as well as small technology grants to 20 news organizations across the state. Grants have supported a range of projects including outreach programs, journalism training, local information hubs and websites, local news services, as well as training programs and oral history projects.
These efforts are part of a triumvirate of moves needed to help tackle the U.S. local news crisis, Steven Waldman says (Peck, 2023). Alongside growing philanthropic support for local journalism, and “reforms, changes and innovations” taking place within newsrooms (e.g. addressing the need for new revenue and audience engagement models), “the third piece of the puzzle is public policy,” he says.
About the Author
Damian Radcliffe is a journalist, researcher, and professor based at the University of Oregon, where he is the Carolyn S. Chambers Professor in Journalism, a Professor of Practice, an affiliate faculty member of the Department for Middle East and North Africa Studies (MENA) and the Agora Journalism Center, and a Research Associate of the Center for Science Communication Research (SCR). Follow him on X/Twitter @Damian Radcliffe
This research is part of a wider project, supported by the Agora Journalism Center, looking at policy and funding possibilities to help rebuild — and develop a more robust, diverse and inclusive — local news system — in the United States.
