 Good afternoon everyone and welcome to Knight Foundations and formed and engaged. This is our 15th episode And we're so glad that you're joining us today Today, we're going to be talking about the decline of local news Which has been accelerated of course by this global pandemic and we're going to be talking about a new a new idea a new solution and it was announced just last Friday a Coalition of 3,000 local news organizations around the country have come together To rebuild local news joining me today is Steve Waldman He's the president and co-founder of report for in America an initiative of the ground truth project but for all of you who have been watching and looking for and Building solutions for local news Steve Waldman is someone who has been at it for a very long time Steve is prior to Creating with Charlie Senate report for America Steve was the author of a land make landmark report called Information needs of communities. It was described by NPR is one of the most comprehensive Overviews of the US media ever produced and this report came about a year after Knight Commission Brought together experts around the country to address the concerns about Disappearing local news and information and that was more than a decade ago much has happened in the last 10 years and now Under his leadership this coalition of 3,000 local news outlets are looking for the government to play a role in Helping rebuild the future of local journalism. So please Please join me today for this conversation with Steve Waldman and Steve first Please tell us how did this coalition come about and why does it make sense now? for there to be a major call To government to government officials to step in and help address this problem Well, thank you for having me and thank you Again for your leadership and Knight Foundation's leadership on this very topic for coming on I guess 15 years now There the reason well two reasons one is the collapse has become so severe That it's it's now at the point where it's probably beyond It being solved only by philanthropy. I kind of say that reluctantly honestly But when you're talking about a drop of about 20 billion dollars in revenue at least of what? you know newspapers have lost the addition of You know 500 million in philanthropy or even more than that is is not going to be sufficient Now I say reluctantly because I don't think anyone is particularly excited about the idea of the government getting involved in this in any way Honestly, I mean, it's it just goes so against our sense that To hold government accountable You can't take money from the government. It's very logical. You know, how can the muck breakers take money from the muck makers? So I think a lot of journalists have been very resistant to the idea of the government getting involved in this and But I became convinced that because of the scale of the collapse we had to look at this again and Start thinking about Are there ways of doing this that the government could help? Where it would not endanger editorial independence and it became particularly acute with coven Because coven, you know, as you know that the problems with local news predate coven But coven has accelerated all of the harmful trends And made the the crisis even more severe and Congress is looking at solutions Congress is starting to look at, you know bailouts for this industry or that industry or what should we do? and so it started there started to be a discussion about what kind of help ought to happen for local news and Honestly, a lot of it ended up focusing on like the only piece of legislation that got included in the house bill For coven was a bill to make sure that the chains the newspaper chains got included in the coven relief bill the ones owned by private equity firms and You know, honestly, I was fine with that like this is a sufficient crisis that everyone probably needed some help But it was a bit eye-opening to me also that like that's it. That's all you got, you know That the that the the only public policy Idea around helping local news was to make sure that, you know, no chain is left behind So I just started to think that the combination of those two things That the scale of the problem is so severe that that there's gonna need to be a focus There's gonna need to be some sort of government Involvement and a little reminder that if journalists don't play a role in making this policy someone else will make the policy for them And it might not be too to our likings people who especially people who like both the First Amendment and innovation It might not come out that way. So I organized this sort of pop-up coalition It had a little bit of an emphasis on locally owned media and nonprofit media Not totally to the exclusion of chains who still represent a lot of you know How news is provided, but we wanted to make sure that locally owned and nonprofit media had a seat at the table, too Steve When you talk about support in Congress for this plan, is it bipartisan support that seems Surprising given the low levels of trust in the news media among Republicans according to a recent night Gallup poll It is a little bit surprising. I was kind of expecting that You know, this is a little bit of an academic exercise of where you know We got to slowly start building support for it, but that would take a long time to get Republican support And that turns out not to be true. There are not from the White House, but from from Republican members of Congress There is an understanding about the importance of local news and they tend to make a distinction between local news and national news and That you know, there's there's concern about government involvement and how it's done But there have been a few different proposals different pieces of it some of which got incorporated into our grand plan that do have Bipartisan support. There's a bill that is quite a number of the ideas we ended up endorsing come from a specific We're billed on a specific piece of legislation called the local Journalism Accountability Act and it's co-authored by a Democratic Congresswoman from Arizona and Kirkpatrick and a Republican Congress Men from Washington, Dan Newhouse, and it has the it's Freakishly broad coalition. I mean it has Congress and Bobby Rush From Chicago one of the most progressive people in Congress and Louie Gohmert From Texas are both co-sponsors of this legislation And I think the reason why is there really is a broad sense that that local news is important Now look it might not be just a really deep understanding of the importance of this for democracy It could be that the members of Congress think this is really hard to get press coverage of what I'm doing when there's no local news Let's you know be honest that that is part of the motivation But that's okay because covering the local congressional delegation is actually one of the things we lose When there's no local journalism and I think that the the reason that this particular approach has gotten bipartisan support including from us is That it's the idea the heart of the idea is you get a $250 refundable tax credit to Americans that they can use to buy a newspaper subscription or Donate to a local nonprofit news organization and a separate version of that a separate clause is to give a Tax credit to small businesses To buy local advertising in local news organizations So the key difference is there's not someone in Washington at a you know department of local news Sitting around parceling out grants to news organizations like we can all pretty it doesn't take a lot of imagination These days to see how that could go wrong like how you know under this administration or really any Administration having the government, you know parcel out huge sums of money to particular media organizations would compromise their independence So this doesn't do that it put it essentially amplifies The voices of America the choices that they want to make now We may not always agree with those choices But it basically is amplifying the the choices of Americans and pointing it in the direction of local news You know, we kind of do the same thing with the charitable to tax the tax deduction for charitable giving Like the government doesn't tell you what charity to give to But it says hey if you whatever charity you give to as long as it's a legit charity will essentially top it off And it was you know part of what my thinking on this was very influenced by by news match Which was created by by night and other foundations To help nonprofit media and the theory behind it Was rather than just us, you know given out grants to news organizations. We like What if we also had it as a way of amplifying the voices that are happening organically on the ground So it matches donations that you know nonprofit news or is it so both of those ideas or it kind of have a similar spirit to them So just to build on a news match because tonight is going to be announcing next week A major contribution to the National Seed Fund one of the other benefits of news match is that One of the goals of news match is not just provide matching contributions, but to help local not-for-profit news Organizations across the country Build their individual donor base find those next major donors Really develop best practices around audience development because at the end of the day if Local journalism cannot be sustainable. It cannot be it cannot be Independent and that's one of our key goals here at Knight Foundation is helping local journalism become sustainable So imagine if I'm sorry. Well, I was just going to say I'm a big fan of news match for the reasons you said It's it's not just you know plugging a hole. It's building capacity that can and capability Yeah, imagine if you know, I forget what the maximum grant amount was 25,000 So imagine if it were 250,000 or 500,000 right the federal government is often is not very good at You know stimulating innovation or picking winners and losers, but it's good at writing checks So imagine if if the federal government essentially wrote a hundred million dollar check to news match or something like it to create an endowment that simply You know super sized what news match is already doing news match already has a set of criteria That I and N, you know implements the Institute for non-profit news to make sure it's legit local news So it's not like a new idea You're taking something that's been built and kind of refined over the last few years through experience and just making it you know the difference between a newsroom being able to get $20,000 and 250,000 or 500,000 could be transformative it could be really on a par with what happened in 1967 when the federal government looked at this assortment of a couple hundred Important but small fragile public radio stations and said this is really important But they're too few and they're not strong enough and they passed the public broadcasting Which essentially now we have 900 public radio stations So I could see a scenario where a supersized news match Could do that for the non-profit, you know, non-profit local news world and also it could do that for many Not-for-profit public radio stations as it does now those public radio stations that are in the business of delivering local journalism Because unfortunately despite all of those local public radio stations across the country. They're not all committed to or or have the have the capacity to deliver local news So Steve let's take the plan walk us through the plan and for one it's in the chat But for everyone watching and listening today the website that you must go to right now or after this broadcast is rebuild localnews.org and Go right to our plan So Steve take us through the plan. It could be it's a little complicated You know the different tax credits the different but but walk us through the plan and and tell us why You and members of the coalition are confident that this this could happen Well, so the madder there are lots of different pieces to this But they kind of fall into some thematic buckets and basic big strategies One is to empower Americans through their own choices to help them financially help local media so that you know as I said could could happen through a refundable tax credit of $250 that you could use to To promote to buy a subscription to a newspaper or a donation to a non-profit. This is I like earned my little Lobbying stripes or angel wings was when we urged the sponsors of this law to include nonprofits in it and say Hey, how about instead in addition to $250 for subscriptions? We also made it for $250 for a donation to nonprofits And and there are experiments like this happening in France and Canada that we can learn from and build on so a second piece of that legislation which we also like is the tax credit to small businesses that they can use for for Advertising in in local media so then the second big thrust is growing nonprofit media and And you know, I don't have to convince you on that front, but we we all believed and by the way This is a coalition that includes nonprofit media and for-profit media And it was very interesting and exciting to see that both of those Constituencies agreed on the importance of the other Like the for-profit folks got the idea that you're going to need a strong nonprofit sector and vice versa So, uh, we need to do a bunch of things to grow nonprofit media And and I do think the historical analogy of of what the government did around public broadcasting is really relevant here They didn't they didn't invent it You know, there was all this and very interesting creative stuff that had happened on the ground and through universities and and things like that just as has happened through The creation of all sorts of nonprofit media So it's really sort of stunning to me The number of public radio stations in 1967 is almost exactly the same as the number of nonprofit local newsrooms right now It's about 300 So it's like at the same moment the same part of their evolution and they're ready To to blow up in a good way Um, you know with government help So the new the supersizing the news match Is is one idea to do that the best way to do that to avoid government monkeying around Would be for the government to write a one-time big check To create an endowment that would essentially supersize the news match That would sort of avoid the possibility of the government going in and you know Wanting to wanting to monkey around with the the ian standards about who could be a legit Newsroom that would probably be the way the way to do it There's also all sorts of things that Have historically stood in the way of nonprofits being formed as news organizations Uh, you know, we did the night foundation help create a a task force on this topic The seven or eight years ago to look at all the ways that the irs You know slows things down And you know, so there are a couple of important clarifications that ought to happen One is to let it be known to nonprofit news organizations that you can take advertising And you can charge for subscriptions and you can do earned revenue Essentially, we all want to get to the point where Nonprofit news rooms are thinking of donations as the third revenue stream Not the only revenue stream There have to be other earned revenue and and frankly the irs's muddiness has made it harder You know, there's as I'm sure you've heard this all the time like of well Can we even have advertising won't that endanger? Yes, you can have advertising, but it would be better if if the irs kind of clarified that made it clear you could do it so There's a number of irs. I'd say cleaning up The things that would help a lot Um, then there's a big idea related to this That we call replanting And it's the idea that you know, we shouldn't only be looking at creating new news organizations You know, the reality is there's 300 nonprofit news organizations. There's 6700 newspapers And there needs to be another front on this on this battle and that is the front about what do we do about these 6700 newspapers And until now honestly the choices have either been, you know, we create something new Or we bail out the newspapers that are a lot of which are owned by hedge funds Which is is a sad thing because like even though it's sometimes necessary We know how this story is going to end. It's not going to be good Like the way, you know newspapers that are owned by hedge funds have are in this downward cycle And there's no sign that's going to end so rather than just accepting that that's the fate Of those 6700 newspapers Let's aggressively attack the idea of replanting Some of these organizations and this is a metaphor that I've tortured beyond recognition by now But it's essentially as you know, like sometimes if a plant is sick because it's sitting in toxic soil If you take it out of that soil and put it into healthier soil It can thrive and what we're talking about is new ownership structures If you got it out of those ownership structures and put it into healthier ownership structures, could it survive? so that might mean Literally donating the newspaper to a nonprofit organization or a public benefit corporation And I think that there's a lot of there's some of this doesn't have to do with government policy Like I think it ought to happen that there ought to be a great big new nonprofit organization Uh well capitalized And we can talk about that that has its job Of replanting, but there are a couple of public policy steps that would really make it more likely to succeed And there's carrots and sticks the the carrots are what if we offered an enhanced charitable deduction to any owner that literally donated its newspaper to the community Or it's or or its assets And uh, you know because we know I mean this won't apply to all 6700 But we know some of these chains are thinking about shutting these papers down Entirely or milking them for another couple years and then shutting them down So wouldn't it be great if we could get some of them instead of saying oh the choice is either milking or shutting Wouldn't it be great if there was a choice of donating? And you have to give a real incentive So Steve, I just wanted to note for the audience As many people know In philadelphia, we have the lend fest institute Which is now the owner of the philadelphia inquirer, which Is a public benefit corporation Which was donated By jerry lindfest the late jerry lindfest who was an extraordinary philanthropist and believed passionately and the value and importance of Reporting that holds the powerful To account and then of course just recently in the past year paul huntsman turned salt lake tribune into a not-for-profit and with his effort did Did create a landmark irs ruling which Which we're hoping that other news organizations will use that ruling To follow in his footsteps but tell us about the other policy areas in addition to more charitable Tax benefits for making that decision and I also just wanted to note that That there are many many news organizations that remain local news organizations and independent family control and at night foundation We're looking toward working with these owners and these include owners Of black legacy newspapers and small newspapers across the Midwest These are people who have committed to serving their communities and delivering journalism in the in the public interest so so tell us how How the plan and how this piece of the plan might support independently owned family owned newspaper It's a really important point because we we do not this coalition and we personally did not Accept the idea that this is going to be solved only through the non-profit sector It's it is also going to need The the you know success Of the commercial sector especially the locally grounded commercial sector and as you said there are people out there They're doing incredible work In for-profit newspapers that are just as committed to their communities as the non-profits are we see this with report for america all the time that the The passion and commitment to public service among some of the commercial newspapers is just as strong as among the non-profits But their business models don't always let them serve the community that the way the way they want to do So so this plan also has a number of steps that would help help with that One of it has to do with the idea that federal antitrust policy Should have the concept of a localism As part of what they look at now This is actually already true in the broadcasting world Like the federal communications commission already looks at localism as a factor But it hasn't been true When the justice department or the or the federal trade commission or courts look at newspaper mergers And they should and they can So in other words, they could look at mergers and even if it's not leading to less competition But it is harming the community They could actually either disallow that that consolidation or put conditions on the merger This is something I learned that I didn't know anything about when I worked a while back at the federal communications commission That mergers when they consider mergers, it's not a binary. Yay or nay thing like yes, it's okay or not They will often say yes But you have to do x y and z and I got in there at one point where you know when the Comcast merger was happening It was an interesting thing. So yes, if you do these things to support local news So any any acquisition of a newspaper chain by a hedge fund Could have that kind of review to it, you know, that says either no or Only if you do x y and z to make sure that you know the commitment to the community Retains So there's other things like that that you could do remember the plant closing legislation that got a lot of attention in the 90s That is basically about You know, if someone's shutting down a factory, you should get some notice to the workers Yes Well, so we're suggesting essentially a a plant closing rule a newspaper closing rule that there has to be a six month notice To the community. This isn't just about the workers. This is so the community can organize And potentially try to acquire the newspaper So I'd always got to work out having the time for it may not mean you have the money or the newspaper may be too far Gone, but at least there should be a speed bump that would enable that to happen And then the last thing I would say for the commercial media Is that the the the ideas that we talked about at the very beginning of the tax credit for subscriptions And the tax credit for for businesses and there's a third one, which is a tax credit for hiring journalists Essentially that news organizations would get, you know, a little bit of help toward the hiring of journalists Those all would help those local newsrooms In a way in the the commercial newsrooms and what I like about it is that because it's it's kind of pointed at the subscriptions It it it It means that they're only going to get that benefit if they provide real value to the community You know at the end of the day, they're going to have to still make the case for why Even this tax credit is going to get pointed toward you So if you're a newspaper that's completely gutted your newsroom And providing no real value, it's going to be hard for you to benefit from that idea So steve, I didn't see mention of local television news organizations in the plan and at night foundation We have been focused as you said for 15 years in addressing the gaps in local news and information And most recently we've made significant investments in the american journalism project in the institute for not for profit news In the solutions journalism network in report for america all members Of this coalition and of course news match launch was launched by night in 2016 and we were like thrilled that so many foundations came to the table in 2017 And we are looking for more funders to join us To help support the national fund For this 2020 news match. So please get in touch with me if you would like to join the national fund But what I don't see are local television news outlets And yes local newspapers have traditionally Provided the original reporting But my colleague Karen runlet has been leading an initiative with local television news organizations around the country that are Increasing their commitment to public service journalism that are using data journalism in really smart creative ways to Deliver really important reporting not just via broadcast, but but on their online outlets What is the role of local television in the in addressing the solution for local journalism? I think it can be Huge and I also think it can and should be much bigger than it has been You know, I think the the reality is that the local news TV stations are doing better than anyone else right now largely because of campaign commercials and Unfortunately, most of them are not investing it back into great local reporting Some are And we should do everything we can to embrace and encourage Those that are and that's what night is doing and there's two things in this plan that could help with that One is actually the idea of expanding the national service model. This is going to sound very self-serving and in fact it is But you know report for america does place journalists into local tv newsrooms And part of what I like about it is is it's it's beat reporting Which is part of what we really want to encourage with local tv is beat reporting because it gets real This is real deep reporting. It's not reporting where you show up at 10 that morning and find out what you're going to cover In the city. This is where you're developing a real expertise and when local tv stations do that They can be just as good as the newspapers. They're they're fully capable of it So we so you know having a larger national service model, whether it's report for america or others That would be placing reporters into tv tv stations as well as others would be part of it The other thing that actually would help uh tv stations The good ones would be That notion of a tax credit to local businesses to buy advertising That could be bought on local tv stations And you know one would hope that it would go to the ones that are really investing in local reporting Thank you. Well, we have tons of questions from our audience. So let's get to them so How do you ensure? How does the coalition ensure? Uh that the money eventually doesn't wind up in the pockets of more partisan ideological newsrooms because as we were Discussing uh right before we went on air in the last campaign. The concern was the rise of national partisan negative partisanship Um at the national level, but now we are seeing so many hyperpartisan sites funded by The left and the right right well, you know My my meta answer to this that isn't goes beyond this is to flood the zone with real journalists Like a lot of these it's really shocking some of the the quotes from people who are doing these hyperpartisan things They've said right out front saying well, there's a vacuum No one else is there. So we're going to go in there and it's kind of true So the most important thing to do to keep the partisan local news from becoming The dominant form of local news is for real journalists to show up We that's the big picture now in terms of you know particular How could you craft policies to make sure you're not helping those that's pretty that's hard actually, you know Part of it is that the that the institute for non-profit news Has developed really good standards as part of the news match A formula for doing that and it tends to be about transparency That you know, if you're hiding who your donors are That's a kind of content neutral way of getting at So I think we you know, we need to look at things like that like transparency at the end of the day, I will say and this People might not agree with this if you look back at the postal subsidies that the founding fathers put in That was probably the most successful type of government intervention and local news It went to all sorts of media outlets honestly, you know, the ones that Attack jefferson and the ones that attacked hamlet, you know, and I think on a certain level It may happen that some of this goes to partisan sites I think that you would I think where we need to draw the line is they need to be doing actual local reporting You know, and if some local news organizations are doing local reporting, but it comes from a certain angle You know, I'm not sure the government should get into the business of saying Those, you know are off limits, but I'm curious what everyone else thinks on that because that's one of the toughest pieces of this Yeah, I agree. That is by far one of the toughest toughest question so we also Have a question about from steve hamilton I really like the idea of not-for-profit news Financial support of not not for profits is always a challenge How much is needed? And can you give us a better idea of what it costs to run a viable news organization the number of people salaries other expenses I like on a on a meta level. I I tend to quote John Thornton the the co-founder of the american journalism project who Probably pissed off a lot of ballet supporters by saying this is a ballet sized problem And he he wasn't meaning to disc ballet He was meaning to make the point that although the consequences to democracy are catastrophic In the scale of problems that the world are trying to solve this is actually solvable Like it's an amount of money that you can get your hands around You can look at a lot of different ways, but let's as a round number. It probably would need about a billion dollars To get pumped into the local news system from philanthropy and government To to solve it. I mean it wouldn't be everything we all would want You could do a little less you could do a little more, but that's the scale Which is actually very achievable, you know, honestly if you did if you did what was in this plan It would double the number of local reporters in america And the price tag would be a couple billion It would be less than the federal government currently spends in tax expenditures for uh, three martini lunches and other business Business and entertainment deductions just to give you, you know a sense of the scale and the question There's no real good answer for how much does it take to run a particular newsroom? It depends on whether you're covering a little neighborhood or New york city, but it is true that one of the ways in which Not only non-profit, but for-profit entities tend to fail is being undercapitalized And what happens is they'll take the little amount of money that they have and they'll pay the journalist because that's the heart of it But then they won't get around to hiring the business person Uh the the head of development or the head of ad sales and So any institution to any local news institution to succeed Needs to have both a business operation and a Journalistic operation to succeed if you're a two-person operation Then that's one in one if you're a hundred person operation. It's probably 50 and 50 But that's um, you know the the main point i'd make We have a question from Barbara rab one of our colleagues in the philanthropy space It's worth noting that the government already does subsidize support for news in the sense that foundation funding is tax advantage And is in your plan the government does not have a say in what news organization foundations fund So that's barbers comment and my question based on barbers comment is Is which you discuss how do you ensure? That the government is not going the government officials are not going to have a say in what uh What non-partisan news organizations committed to independent journalism get funded? Yeah, it's a great question and and barba has been a real leader in this whole sector of non-profit news so there's two ways you can Assure that and she and i'm barbers right that governments government involvement It persists like i mentioned the postal subsidies in the founding fathers era, but there's other subsidies now Including the corporation for public broadcasting, but also newspaper subsidies and tax subsidies and things like that So one is the type is is the type of policy remedy? um, there are types of remedies that involve discretionary decision making by government officials And there are types that don't you know the charitable tax deduction as an example Does not involve the government Deciding which charities to support it it basically amplifies Decisions that individual americans make about what consumers do So you want to look for ideas that are in that same category? As opposed to great big grant programs where there's a lot of discretionary decision making Now there may well be instances where it makes sense where there to be a more Conscious government role Kind of like the way there is with the corporation for public broadcasting There is a Private agency that's government charted that that does import really important valuable things So you want to when you do that you want to make sure first of all as much of it is formulaic as possible I know formulaic kind of has a bad name It sounds like you're on autopilot and not you know fine-tuning things But there's when it comes to a free press there's a lot of advantages to formulaic You know it it it it follow it takes political interference Out to some degree and the other thing I would say is Build in all sorts of firewalls the corporation for public broadcasting Has a bunch of firewalls It's been pretty good Not perfect So I would say here's a chance for us to even improve upon what was done with the corporation for public broadcasting And make it even more airtight the most important thing Is that if there's any entity it should have a dedicated revenue stream So that the people aren't having to go up to capitol hill every year and beg senators for money So steve there are More excellent questions here and we're going to get to them in just a second But at a time when We are in the middle of a national recognition on racial injustice and much of what Has been created existing organizations Came about during a time where systemic racism Capital really dictated who got money to build local news and and who didn't How does this plan or how might this plan address the real existing inequalities and equities? That is that currently exist for local journalism for communities across the country Right, and this is really important. So one of the the five planks of this plan is to create policies that um help marginalized better coverage of marginalized communities And there are several different things you can do but It partly just has to do with the consciousness in all of these different policies that we're talking about. So for instance You know, there have been efforts in the past for the government To say well, we're doing advertising Let's have the advertising go to local media and that has happened In fact, the federal government already spends a billion dollars on advertising and one of the things we suggest is Hey, how about half of that going through local media? Well in the past? What's happened is very little of that ended up getting to minority media So it you know lots of media got help but very rarely did did those publications that were covering Communities of color now in new york city the community The a program at the cuny graduate school of journalism went right at that In terms of the advertising that was being spent by the city of new york And they said this is great that you're spending advertising money But it's not getting down to the community level and they work with the city To make sure it actually got down to a community level And I think there are ways of constructing policies that make that more important For instance, you could say that if you're going to have government money go to local news That a certain amount of it needs to go to small media That you know because a lot of most journal publications covering communities of color are family owned and local Or tour specifically towards communities of color and when you're doing replanting That that that we make real effort to be conscious of the fact that a lot of the publications that are hanging by a thread Are black owned newspapers and hispanic owned newspapers And if we if we essentially say hey all we want to do is create new nonprofit things or all we want to do is help big chains One of the consequences is that the already bad system in terms of minority newspapers is going to get way worse Yeah, because we already have many newspapers around the country that have ignored Calls to have their newsrooms reflect the communities they cover and Which has presented big big big challenges for those communities today and newsrooms Let's go back to some of these excellent questions We have a question here from steve hamilton Why not just declare not profit journalism as a quote? A religion of truth and transparency end of quote and piggyback on existing protections and tax privileges for religious organizations That's clever. That is a clever idea Well, I would rather go even more more frontally at this because right now what happens is that non-profit news organizations try to piggyback onto a different existing provision, which is the educational Tax deduction and say hey, hey, we're really educational institutions and sometimes it means saying Hey in addition to providing information we train people and we're kind of an educational institution Why not just go straight up and say public service journalism is a tax exempt function? I would rather do that than you know, I sort of wouldn't object to you know getting it through the door However, we can but I think the best thing would be to just straight up say this is a public interest function And what about how might the plan benefit? That Super local news initiatives, namely neighborhood news in urban areas. What ideas are floating around for For this purpose. I think steve one thing that You know, those of us who are not living in this space every single day Think the solution alone might be more local news organizations when you and I are both working With organizations around the country like resolve Philadelphia which is increasing the volume of quality news and information and and addressing real problems around around equity and an inclusiveness by By fostering collaboration among not just the mainstream news organizations in philadelphia But on many of the smaller outlets Serving serving Communities that have been traditionally underrepresented in the mainstream organizations also look at outlier media in detroit Which is it's not that they're using text. They have created a new way to inform detroiters on One-to-one Interaction and of course city bureau in chicago Which is involving members of the community to cover local meetings meetings the documenters project. So how does your How does the plan address not just more reporters more? For profit online sites newspapers But some of these other new ways that are not so new ways but different ways of informing and engaging communities One of the things I love about the this this refundable tax credit Thing and the supersizing news match idea Is it really works well with hyperlocal community organizations and collaborative? Because instead of if you had like a big federal grant program You'd have to apply to the federal government or the state government and You know that has a big bias towards big organizations This is where you're essentially putting money in the hands of people in the community No matter what their income is and then the local news organization has to raise their hand and And say yo, we're valuable. Here's what we're doing. They still will have to do that. It won't happen automatically But if they can convince the people in their own neighborhoods that they're offering something of value Then that money can go to them and it can happen down to the block level You know, it's like just the people on that block who all are going to get would get $250 to basically Put toward local media could put it toward a hyperlocal site And you know same thing with with the news match So that's that's why we became very fond of these sort of bottom up types of policy approaches Because it's it's also kind of future friendly, you know, that's this is always a like This is always a problem with policy making is people tend to make policy around the existing players partly because those are the people who hire lobbyists and they you know make sure that the the policies reflect, you know Have them be winners And so you want to make sure that your policy is future friendly that it will adapt along with the marketplace So if five years from now, it turns out that Actually, it's collaborations like reveal Philadelphia That are transforming that they'll be able to get more and more Great And what about the role of technology companies? We know that That technology has disrupted the traditional business model That we have what 80 of all new digital ad revenue going to two zip codes in california And those are the zip codes that house google and and facebook so what what What role do you see technology companies playing in the solution? and and does the plan call on government for example to address 230 to address the The the claim that google and facebook have maintained for years that they are not publishers So therefore they should not be responsible in the same way a news organizations are for what is published On their on their news sites on their platforms Well, we didn't dive deep into that one part of it because it's those are huge issues that affect local news for sure, but Lots of other lots of other things the one way that it most directly potentially affects local news Is as a revenue source for funding this You know, so there are proposals out there that to tax the digital platforms in some way and use the money for to help support local news And the you know the problem with those proposals in the past has been It didn't say what you do with the money, you know, it's a we'll we'll raise the money and that's there's a you know Rough justice to it, but if it's not spent in a way that's actually constructive It'll just make things worse. So I would look at this plan as here's what you could do with the money If you go about that there's other ways of raising the money as well You know, I like the idea of when the government auctions off spectrum that belongs to the public Some of that money could go to help local news, but I'm certainly open to the You know the idea is that that you know public policy Remedies around the digital platforms could help finance some of this So one of our listeners viewers Notes that providing a credit to small businesses is nice, but if small business doesn't see results They will not continue to advertise in the local news organization And so and evans here is recommending that small businesses get a Get a better chance of competing with facebook and google on the ad side and that means That means developing and and using the capabilities That a lot of large companies that every political campaign in america is doing right now. They're using facebook. They're using Google to get in to people's news feeds so There certainly needs to be as an evan suggests here solutions to help make sure that the that the Small businesses see results from their local newspapers because we can't not change the way The people are consuming news and information just so differently um now So what technologies do or could reduce overhead? To help boost local news organizations, I guess that you and I know there's lots of funded efforts now including an effort by wordpress Knight foundation has made a multi-million dollar commitment to help small publishers With their content management systems and their crm and news revenue hub Is working with many outlets? to Really develop that capability To generate revenue. What are some of the other? Solutions out there steve that you see that philanthropy while we're waiting for this um For movement on this ambitious plan you have outlined. What ways do you think philanthropy and and all of us can? Do you right now to support local news? Well, you know, I think more of of what we're already doing in terms of when we're spotting There's a lot of wonderful organic activity going on out there And when we see it helping to nurture it and fund it and enhance it is is the right thing to do because there's different models in different communities And uh, it's if you look at it from like a capital Financial point of view like the way that you know venture capital would world look at it There needs to be sort of mezzanine financing the middle tier financing That helps get to the next level it's it's a lot of what american journalism project is doing but it needs to be you know More more more more The the other thing I would say is that the um This idea of a replanting fund One of the riddles that you saw with the consolidation of newspapers Is they would say oh, we all have to keep merging and merging and merging because there's economies of scale And honestly, there was some truth to that there are economies of scale But it also kind of became an excuse after a certain point Or the benefits of the economy's scale were way were outweighed by the negatives Of having a chain that's owned by a hedge fund and say But but there was some truth to the idea of economies of scale So we need to try to replicate that for smaller entities So if for instance, we were to create a great big new entity that would help with replanting one of the things they could do is create or Create or license from the existing things tech platforms that could help all these different players to succeed Without having to reinvent the wheel every time they start Well, thank you steve so much for joining us just a couple of days after this bold ambitious and exciting announcement and we hope to join you on this journey at Everyone here at night foundation and everyone listening to help strengthen local journalism to hold the powerful to account Thank you in the next couple of weeks We'll be hearing from elizabeth hanson He's the author of a new report that was just released today by the shornstein center And we'll be talking about other solutions to help ensure That we have informed and engaged communities served by robust nonpartisan independent local journalism Thank you, steve and thank you for your commitment over so many years To helping get it right. Thank you Thank you so much for having me