The Society of Professional Journalists said Thursday that Google’s commitment to a $250 million plan supporting California newsrooms should be an example for other states on how to “bolster local journalism” and called on decision-makers to ensure the deal is a “genuine step forward” for a struggling news industry.
“The Society of Professional Journalists calls on California decision-makers to ensure that yesterday’s groundbreaking agreement between California lawmakers and Google to provide new funding for news outlets serves as a genuine step forward in reversing our nation’s alarming decline in newsroom employment,” the organization said in a statement Thursday.
Read it in full below:
SPJ calls on California decision-makers to ensure that yesterday’s agreement between California lawmakers and Google serves as a genuine step forward in reversing our nation’s alarming decline in newsroom employment.
— Society of Professional Journalists (@spj_tweets) August 22, 2024
Read our full statement: https://t.co/HyV8b1RITg pic.twitter.com/IAhvzEYDHX
The five-year deal between the state and the tech giant, announced Wednesday, would secure up to $250 million in total funding from Google, taxpayers and potentially additional private sources for eligible local news orgs and also provide newsrooms with a so-called artificial intelligence “accelerator” to provide journalistic tools for writers and editors. It would notably shelve the proposed California Journalism Preservation Act, which mandates tech companies like Google pay news outlets to distribute their content.
Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland) led the deal and posed that it “represents a cross-sector commitment to supporting a free and vibrant press.” It would see California news publishers be beneficiaries of a News Transformation Fund, as administered by the University of California Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.
Still seeking legislative approval, some lawmakers questioned the merits of the deal and the Media Guild of the West denounced it as “vague” and “opaque.” Others called it “disastrous.”
But California Gov. Gavin Newsom praised the first-in-the-nation effort.
“The deal not only provides funding to support hundreds of new journalists but helps rebuild a robust and dynamic California press corps for years to come, reinforcing the vital role of journalism in our democracy,” he said in a statement.
The California News Publishers Association trade group called the agreement “a first step toward what we hope will become a comprehensive program to sustain local news in the long term.”
SPJ national president Ashanti Blaize-Hopkins echoed other media unions’ concerns Thursday that the deal did not have journalists at the negotiating table to help guide its terms.
“At the very least journalists should be deeply involved in how this plan will be rolled out, as it could potentially impact their livelihoods,” Blaize-Hopkins said. “As other states study this effort for lessons on how to bolster local journalism, I hope California leaders will set an example that both centers and honors the input of working professionals who fight tirelessly to keep the public informed.”
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