Level the playing field with Big Tech

But despite doing everything right to keep our business models healthy and thriving, we find ourselves locked in a system that never played fair. Although local news outlets employ more than 75,000 print, digital and broadcast professionals across the state, the tech mega-conglomerations of Google and Facebook capture 60% of digital ad dollars … without employing a single reporter. Their vise grip on the market has shuttered newsrooms across the Golden State, leaving a sea of news deserts, especially in marginalized areas like the Central Valley’s.

For the first time in history, we’re being given the chance to level that playing field. Backed by strong support, Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland) is heralding the California Journalism Preservation Act (AB 886), which would require Big Tech to pay a “journalism usage fee” when they use local news content and sell advertising alongside it. It’s a measure that ensures benefits for all of California, as publishers would be required to put 70% of those fees towards funding more journalism jobs across the state.

We at CNPA are joined in supporting this effort by the News/Media Alliance, bringing together print, digital and broadcast media in this David vs. Goliath fight. It’s a simple concept: California news publishers want to be paid a fair price for the original news content they go to considerable expense to produce. But they have little bargaining power against Google’s multi-billion-dollar monopoly share (92.2%) of the search market where Google “publishes” local news for consumers and incurs none of the costs.

It will take a herculean effort to achieve, as Big Tech and its deep pockets threaten to bury our content if this sensible piece of legislation passes. That’s why we need you, all who are reading this, to help stabilize this industry and prevent more communities from losing their local news. Pick up the phone and call your local legislators, and make sure they understand what the California Journalism Preservation Act means for democracy.

For there can be no democracy without a free and robust press: someone to ask the hard questions, monitor government activity and shed light on the truth. But currently, that press is at the mercy of Big Tech’s stranglehold, which is anything but democratic. It’s time to allow the free market to ensure that news, like any other commodity, is given a fair value.

After years of losing revenue to companies with multi-billion-dollar bottom lines, we have the chance to right the sins of the past and restore stability to California’s Fourth Estate. Let’s make sure AB 886 gets the support it – and we – deserve.

CNPA Chairperson Emily Charrier is editor and publisher of Sonoma Media Investments’ Sonoma Index-Tribune and publisher of the Petaluma Argus-Courier.