www.montereycountynow.com FEBRUARY 20-26, 2025 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY 13 The perils of losing local journalists are well documented, such as a decline in civic engagement and more government dysfunction. Also well documented is the steep decline of local journalism. Since 2005, according to a 2024 report by the Medill School for Journalism, more than 3,200 newspapers have vanished. The pace of closures was worse than previously anticipated. “In our 2022 report, the State of Local News Project predicted that by the end of 2025, the United States would have lost one-third of its print newspapers over the past two decades. In this year’s report, we found that the country has already exceeded that mark. A little fewer than 5,600 newspapers remain,” per the 2024 follow-up. From 2022-2023, newspaper jobs in the U.S. decreased by 7,000. This precarious landscape has prompted a growing number of advocates to search for solutions to staunch the bleeding. Ultimately, those solutions come down to money. Questions about who pays, how much and how that money is spent—the details—are at the heart of upcoming negotiations. Last year, state lawmakers, Gov. Gavin Newsom and Google executives announced they had reached an agreement to create the News Transformation Fund. The state agreed to drop Assembly Bill 886, the California Journalism Preservation Act, under fierce pressure from Google. It was a big win for Big Tech—instead of platforms paying a “link tax” for journalism they are stealing, Google and the State of California would put a collective $250 million into newsrooms. Now budget season is beginning, and Newsom is proposing $30 million in state funds to kickstart the concept. But negotiations about how the fund will run, who will run it and how to fund it are ongoing. Matt Pearce, president of Media Guild of the West, wrote to Newsom and legislative leaders in January, urging them to rethink the concept for more long-term, consistent revenue from Big Tech platforms. “We need a law, not annual lobbying mayhem,” Pearce wrote. Budget season is lobbying mayhem season, however, even when it comes to extending existing, successful, proven programs. One success story in the rather bleak landscape of the journalism industry is the California Local News Fellowship, funded as a one-time, $25 million state budget allocation in 2022. (The Weekly is proud to be participating in this program, with Staff Writer Katie Rodriguez nearly six months into her fellowship.) But as the fellowship enters its third cohort, it will reach its end. “The simple fact is without a new budget allocation, the program will go away,” Steven Glazer, a retired California State Senator who is now a senior adviser to the nonprofit Rebuild Local News, told a group of journalists in a Zoom meeting on Friday, Feb. 14. Glazer is pitching a $15 million annual budget allocation to extend the fellowship and to add a management and editing training component. Combined, he’s calling it the California Propel Local News Initiative. In the scheme of California’s $322 billion total budget, Glazer said, “It would be referred to as budget dust.” It’s relatively little money for a lot of gain, serving the dual goals of workforce development and rebuilding newsrooms. In the win-win-win proponents of the fellowship love to talk about, Rodriguez adds capacity to our newsroom while getting handson experience to develop in her career. Most importantly, it benefits our readers, thanks to more stories reported and published. “Fellows are winning, newsrooms are winning, communities are winning,” said Christa Scharfenberg, fellowship director. The fellowship program just released its first impact, showing that 76 fellows in newsrooms across the state are producing over 100 stories every week. Those are 100 stories that deserve to be told, and 76 fellows on career paths in an industry that needs them—but they need a place to work, during the two-year fellowship and after it is over. That’s where the News Transformation Fund is critical. Especially when entire programs can be viewed as “budget dust,” we need all of the initiatives we can fund to bolster journalism. Sara Rubin is the Weekly’s editor. Reach her at sara@montereycounytnow.com. Deadline Driven The rubber meets the road for California to fund journalism. By Sara Rubin SECOND STRIKE…Squid knows that sequels always bring mixed feelings. Was it better or worse than the original? In the case of a recall attempt to remove Andrew Sandoval from his position representing District 5 on Salinas City Council, the first episode was a bust. The original proponent, Tyler Burrola, tells Squid’s colleague via email that his effort is kaput: “I have ended all involvement with the recall and am unaware of any ongoing efforts.” But Squid is getting ready with a big bucket of shrimp-flavored popcorn for a sequel, because a group of Big Ag companies including Taylor Farms, Tanimura & Antle and Premium Packing donated $69,500 combined to Citizens Supporting the Recall of Andrew Sandoval in 2024, according to the latest campaign finance forms. It makes Squid think they are just gearing up for the sequel. (As of Feb. 14, there is no second attempt yet underway; Salinas City Clerk Patricia Barajas says nobody has filed a fresh recall petition at City Hall.) Meanwhile, Sandoval is working on his own follow-up with TikTok videos mocking the big bucks. He buys the company’s salad mix for his kids, he says, with a tone of fake disbelief: “Oh, no! I’m paying for my own recall!” Given that Taylor Farms has so far given $49,000 to the cause, that’s a lot of lettuce. SAFETY SIXTH…Squid has been checking out some new businesses lately, including Monterey’s first cannabis dispensary, which opened nine years after California voters legalized it. It’s far easier to open a gun shop. Just last week, Squid wrote about L&B Firearm Solutions, set to open in Monterey’s Oak Grove neighborhood, a quiet residential area with a few spots zoned for commercial use. Upon discovering that the shop was set to open, local residents aired their concerns to the Monterey City Council, arguing such a use was incompatible with a sleepy residential neighborhood. But the die had already been cast—the city granted L&B its business license late last year—and Squid wrote of the residents’ efforts, “Resistance is futile.” It turns out, Squid was at least partly wrong about that: On Feb. 18, after Squid’s deadline, council considered an urgency ordinance to temporarily put a hold on licensing new retail businesses that sell firearms and/or ammunition—L&B brings the total in the city to five—while staff reexamines the city’s zoning codes to prevent “a proliferation of firearm business locations in the City without regard to the appropriateness of their location.” Considering that Monterey Police seized 20 firearms from a convicted felon on Feb. 12, which they discovered while investigating an unrelated crime involving an e-motorcycle chase, suggests this ordinance is long overdue. But hey—at least cannabis is finally allowed. THE LOCAL SPIN SQUID FRY THE MISSION OF MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY IS TO INSPIRE INDEPENDENT THINKING AND CONSCIOUS ACTION, ETC. “We need a law, not annual lobbying mayhem.” SEND SQUID A TIP: squid@montereycountynow.com
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