The last 10 or 15 years have been tough for local news outlets.
Beginning over a decade ago, big digital platforms like Facebook and Google started siphoning advertising dollars from local media markets, but without replacing the coverage of local issues that newspapers and broadcasters provided. There are now fewer media outlets carrying the information that oils the gears of democracy, such as news on local elections, zone change requests, health care changes and profiles of local heroes.
A 2018 University of North Carolina study found that 20% of all metro and community newspapers — about 1,800 — have stopped printing since 2004. The study also identified 171 U.S. counties with no local news outlets — dubbed “news deserts” — including 28 counties in the mountain west.
And many of the newspapers that have remained have shrunk significantly, with fewer reporters to attend public meetings and ask officials questions. The result is that readers are being given less local news directly related to their communities. A 2018 Duke University study found that only 43% of news stories delivered to communities are original and only 17% of stories are local.
A bill introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives on July 16 by four-term Arizona congresswoman and former Sedona city attorney, U.S. Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick [D-District 2], aims to give local journalism a boost.
The Local Journalism Sustainability Act, HR 7640, would provide tax credits to the three major participants in local news: Readers, advertisers and producers of local news.
The first credit would allow taxpayers to deduct the cost of annual subscriptions to local news from their taxes, up to $250. The second credit gives local newspapers tax credits for wages paid to journalists up to certain limits, and the third gives tax credits to small businesses for the costs of buying ads in local media, up to $5,000.
The bill has 16 bipartisan cosponsors, six Republicans and 10 Democrats, and has been referred to the House Ways and Means Committee.
“Local journalism is a bedrock pillar of communities across the United States,” Kirkpatrick said in a press release. “Unfortunately, journalistic endeavors throughout the country are facing major economic struggles that put the future of many publications in serious jeopardy. These struggles existed before COVID, but the pandemic has only made them more severe. We need to make sure these publications can sustain themselves through this crisis and beyond, and I believe the credits in this bill make significant progress in providing a pathway to that sustainability.”
