Written by WALTER KAWAHARA

Graphics by WALTER KAWAHARA

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A Contra Costa Congressman reintroduced two pieces of legislation to protect local journalism. One of the bills could usher a change in how local publications operate and notch another policy issue in his career. In this article, The Page reviews the Saving Local News Act. Earlier this month, on February 9th, 2024, California District 10 Representative Mark DeSaulnier (D) reintroduced the Saving Local News Act in Washington D.C. to address the decades-long decline in local journalism by making it easier for local publications to become non-profits. 

DeSaulnier was joined by fellow representative Jamie Raskin (D) of Maryland and delegate Eleanor Norton Holmes (D) of the District of Columbia in introducing the legislation, alongside House Resolution (H.R) 1005. Of the two, the Saving Local News Act, officially House Resolution 7306, is more substantial. While H.R. 1005, as a non-binding resolution, is purely symbolic—if it were passed, it would merely express the “importance of local media outlets to society and expresses the urgent need for Congress to take action to help prevent their decline,” according to digital press release from DeSaulnier—the Saving Local News Act would amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, making it easier for local news organizations to become non-profits. 

This comes as the state of local journalism continues to worsen. While local newspapers were once able to support themselves through advertising revenue and subscriptions, circulation has been down in recent decades and only gotten worse. In 2023, an average of 2.5 newspapers closed per week, and over 65 million Americans now live in what the Brookings Institute calls “News desserts”, counties with only one or fewer local publications. Publications that have survived, meanwhile, have heavily consolidated and cut costs, with mergers and mass lay-offs becoming a staple of the industry. 

DeSaulnier argues that this trend is detrimental to democracy. “From informing the electorate to holding power to account, without a flourishing free press there is no American democracy,” he said in a press conference introducing the legislation. DeSaulnier is a veteran of California politics. Once a self-styled progressive republican, the democratic congressman has served on the Concord City Council–including as mayor–the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors, and in both chambers of the state legislature before entering the United States House of Representatives in 2015. In all of these positions, DeSaulnier has been known for his proclivity for policy niches; transportation and infrastructure policy–high-speed rail and Bay Bridge oversight in particular–he cut his teeth on transportation and infrastructure issues in local and state government and substance abuse prevention and mental health issues have become a hallmark of his career. DeSaulnier has been rewarded for his knowledge with a professional advancement, becoming the first freshman Assemblymember to chair the chamber’s Transportation Committee in 2007. 

Now, the congressman has set his sights on local journalism. Having first shown an interest in the subject in late the 2010s, alongside Representative David Cicilline (D) of Rhode Island, DeSaulnier is considered the leader of a small, unofficial posse of representatives concerned with local journalism issues. The gang introduced the Saving Local News Act once before, in 2021, but the bill died in the House Ways and Means Committee. Now that he’s reintroduced the bill, however, DeSaulnier faces an uphill battle to get it passed. The congressional posse has shrunk from seven to three, which can partially be attributed to the fact that representatives David Cicilline and Ed Perlmutter (D) CO have both left Congress. Additionally, all the bill’s cosponsors are Democrats in a Republican Congress. 

Meanwhile, some argue that the bill is not needed at all. The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, argues that many of the issues currently plaguing local journalism are merely symptoms of growing pains in the industry. It points to the growing number of local news sites popping up across the United States in a purely digital format, some of which even expand to print after becoming financially viable online. This new wave of local journalism, which is of roughly equal quality to its established print counterparts, often with a bare-bones staff, will be more than capable of supplementing any of the decline in print newspapers into the next decade, they argue. To organizations like the Cato Institute, the current financial strain on local journalism, whether it be mass lay-off or mergers, are not the death throes of a dying medium, but merely its growing pains into a more efficient form of news, making the Saving Local News Act, even if well-intentioned, functionally pointless. Still, the bill has garnered the support of various groups, including Free Press Action, Local Independent Online News (LION) Publishers, and the National Newspaper Association, among others, with Mike Rispoli, senior director of journalism and civic information at Free Press Action saying, “We applaud Representative DeSaulnier for recognizing that local journalism is a public good — one that is essential to the health of our democracy and urgently in need of public support.”

Determining the proper course of action on this front is difficult, and whether DeSaulnier can pass the bill is a contentious question–one which the California congressman may have to flex his three decades of political muscle to answer. As to whether it will help reverse the stagnation of local journalism is another. But if DeSaulnier does pass the bill, he will almost certainly enjoy some good press for it.