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Case Study: The Impact of the Local Journalism Sustainability Act at The Afro-American, Rebuild Local News

The Local Journalism Sustainability Act and the benefits it provides can seem like an abstraction, but if passed it could help The AFRO further engage the Black community in Baltimore, D.C. and beyond double its editorial staff, securing its future for another 130 years. This is not just the work of a good newspaper, it’s the work of democracy.

Case Study: The Impact of the Local Journalism Sustainability Act at The Afro-American, Rebuild Local News

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Opinion: A federal lifeline for local news
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Opinion: A federal lifeline for local news

By helping local news through a market-oriented approach, the Local News Sustainability Act has gained bipartisan support in both the House and the Senate. As it happens, Pennsylvania’s members of Congress are in a position to have an outsize impact. Sens. Bob Casey and Pat Toomey both serve on the Senate Finance Committee, which helps govern the proposed legislation. Reps. Brendan Boyle and Dwight Evans sit on the House Ways and Means Committee, which would help advance the bill in that chamber.

Opinion: A federal lifeline for local news

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The New Deal Program That Rewrote America
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The New Deal Program That Rewrote America

Lately, there’s even been talk about resurrecting one of the dreamier New Deal programs, the Federal Writers’ Project, which put unemployed teachers, reporters, novelists, librarians, poets, and folklorists to work on a big, communal publishing venture that held a mirror up to America. Not surprisingly, a lot of that talk has been from writers—but not all of it. In May, Representatives Ted Lieu, of California, and Teresa Leger Fernandez, of New Mexico, introduced the 21st Century Federal Writers’ Project Act, legislation that would create a grants program, administered by the Department of Labor, to hire journalists and other writers struggling with pandemic layoffs or the vicissitudes of the gig economy. (Lieu took inspiration from an op-ed written by David Kipen, an L.A.-based writer and arts administrator with a self-professed “evangelical belief in the lasting lessons of the FWP.”) It would be a jobs program, Lieu told the Los Angeles Times—and, like its nineteen-thirties predecessor, it would be animated by a documentary impulse, gathering American stories, starting with those of the pandemic, that “might otherwise go untold.”

The New Deal Program That Rewrote America

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Hedge Fund Buys Paper. Hedge Fund Closes Paper.
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Hedge Fund Buys Paper. Hedge Fund Closes Paper.

The Bowie Blade-News, a 41-year-old weekly newspaper in Bowie, Md., published its final print edition on Thursday, two months after its parent company, Tribune Publishing, was sold to the New York hedge fund Alden Global Capital for $633 million. A brief, unsigned note to readers at the bottom of Thursday’s front page announced the closing.

Hedge Fund Buys Paper. Hedge Fund Closes Paper.

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More chain-owned news organizations are returning to local ownership
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More chain-owned news organizations are returning to local ownership

“It’s definitely safe to say that there is a trend of some newspapers returning to local ownership,” April said. “… It made sense for these large newspaper companies to build when they did, but now it’s making sense for them to peel off these papers and put them in the hands of people who can really operate them in this day and age.”

More chain-owned news organizations are returning to local ownership

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NewsGuild applauds Local Journalism Sustainability Act
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NewsGuild applauds Local Journalism Sustainability Act

The NewsGuild-CWA is enthusiastically supporting a bill that would provide a path to financial stability for struggling local newspapers, digital-only publications and local television and radio stations through a series of tax credits. “The Local Journalism Sustainability Act would provide a much-needed boost to save local news jobs,” said NewsGuild President Jon Schleuss. “Half of America’s journalism jobs have been wiped out in the past decade and the losses have accelerated during the pandemic.

NewsGuild applauds Local Journalism Sustainability Act