Strengthen local reporting capacity by helping newsrooms hire and retain journalists.
Why a Local Journalist Employment Credit?
The United States has lost 75 percent of its local journalists per capita since 2002. Hundreds of communities have no dedicated local news coverage at all. The consequences are well documented: when local journalist jobs disappear, voter turnout drops, municipal borrowing costs rise, government corruption goes undetected, and civic engagement weakens.
The local journalist employment credit is a direct response to that crisis. This model legislation creates a refundable tax credit or equivalent grant program for local news organizations based on the number of journalists they employ, with enhanced support for the smallest community news organizations and additional incentives for outlets that create new journalist positions.
The credit is designed to be platform-neutral and content-neutral, with objective and transparent qualification standards. No government official evaluates the quality or viewpoint of an applicant’s journalism. Local print, digital, and broadcast outlets alike can benefit, regardless of whether they are for-profit businesses, sole proprietorships, or 501(c)(3) nonprofits. The credit is future-friendly, incentivizing employment of local journalists while staying flexible to innovations in business models and technology.
The model policy creates two types of refundable tax credits. The first is a job retention credit worth $20,000 per journalist for up to five positions and $15,000 per additional journalist. The higher rate for the first five journalists is designed to direct proportionally more support to small, independent, and ethnic media outlets that would make up most of the program beneficiaries and often face the steepest financial hurdles even as they provide essential community news.
The second refundable credit is a $15,000 new-hire credit for news organizations that increase their journalist headcount. This credit stacks on top of the retention credit, so a local news organization can receive $30,000 to $35,000 in combined support for that position’s first full year of employment.
Both credits are fully refundable. If the credits exceed what an organization owes, the state pays the difference as a cash refund, like a grant.
The program also includes safeguards to prevent abuse. Applicants must publicly disclose their ownership, maintain a corrections policy, and carry media liability insurance. Organizations controlled by political action committees or 501(c)(4) political organizations are disqualified. These objective standards are designed to screen out “pink slime” operations and other bad actors without giving any government official discretion over editorial content.
Local journalist employment credits are a popular and effective tool to strengthen local news
Our approach draws on similar laws recently enacted in Illinois, New York, and New Mexico. The Illinois program, the first to go into effect, distributed $4 million in tax credits, supporting over 260 journalist jobs across more than 120 local print, digital and broadcast outlets statewide in 2025. Two-thirds of the recipient news organizations had six or fewer journalists. Out of all of the funds distributed by the program, more than one-third went to non-profits and more than half went to news organizations located outside the Chicago metro area. This is a program that reaches a broad variety of communities across a state.
Here’s how Illinois news providers described the immediate or expected impact of the credits during its 2025 rollout:
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- A larger publisher said the credit “allowed us to… save jobs and roles that we did not have to make cuts for.”
- A small publisher spoke to its potential attracting other support: “I could use this as a jumping off point for fundraising for this particular position. It’s almost like a match at that point.”
- One recipient said: “It will be our second largest revenue stream for the year… about 15% more. So that’s a sizable impact on our ability to cover the community.”
- “Payroll is our biggest expense as a small newspaper,” said a suburban non-profit publisher. “The credit is a lot of money to us. It will help pay our freelancers. We have a lot of requests for coverage that we are not able to respond to, but if we can expand our freelance team and get them out to more events, that will help our community.”
- A small digital publisher in the Chicago-area said, “We applied because any support that helps us retain journalists is meaningful. Even relatively modest amounts can make the difference between keeping someone on staff or not.”
- One recipient said that the program had “at least informed decisions to make another hire and as well as add a medical package this year.”
No matter where you live, getting high quality local news depends on local journalist boots on the ground. Without action, more communities will lose the coverage that strengthens community identity and holds local institutions accountable. The local journalist employment credit gives states a tested, adaptable tool to prevent that outcome.
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