State Activity Tracker

On March 27, 2026, Assemblymember Christopher Ward held a press conference to build momentum for the Community Newsroom Employment and Workforce Sustainability Act (Community NEWS Act, AB2222) and the Public Media Stabilization Fund, a separate effort to provide $70 million for public broadcasters and $10 million for ethnic media. AB 2222 would provide a refundable tax credit to local newsrooms that retain or hire local journalists, similar to other journalist employment subsidies enacted in Illinois, New York and New Mexico. Rebuild Local News is the bill’s sponsor and helped develop the language (Read our explainer). Eligible newsrooms would receive $20,000 for each of their first five full‑time journalists and $15,000 for each additional journalist, with an extra $15,000 incentive for every new journalism job created. Initial endorsers include Rebuild Local News, the California Independent News Alliance, Media Guild of the West, SAG‑AFTRA, Latino Media Collaborative, and journalism program chairs across the California State University system. AB 2222 will be heard by the Assembly Revenue and Taxation Committee on April 13.

In February 2026, Sen. Susan Rubio introduced SB1358, which would require state agencies to spend at least 40 percent of their advertising budgets with community and ethnic media, and to report that spending.

In early 2026, California local news advocates mobilized to press lawmakers to continue funding for existing local news programs after Gov. Gavin Newsom did not include any funding in his January budget proposal for 2026-2027. Existing programs funded through the state budget include the California Local News Fellowship at UC Berkeley and the upcoming California Civic Media Program administered by California GO-Biz, which was originally struck as a five-year deal with Google but now has only been funded for one year. The legislature will pass a budget by June 2026.

In Spring 2026, California GO-Biz Director Dee Dee Myers is expected to decide on distribution criteria for the Civic Media Program to support local news organizations, which was created in October 2025 when Gov. Newsom approved Assemblymember Buffy Wicks’ $20 million news funding partnership with Google. The bill passed on a strict party-line vote, with Democrats supporting it and Republicans opposed. The administration awarded The James B. McClatchy Foundation with responsibility for administering the grants, with support from Journalism Funding Partners. GO-Biz has also appointed a nine-person news industry advisory board to consult on the program.

The Civic Media Program comes from a 2024 agreement with Google that led to the shelving of two key bills: Wicks’ AB 886, known as the California Journalism Preservation Act, which sought to secure funding for local news through tech platform agreements or arbitration, and Sen. Steven Glazer’s SB 1327, which aimed to levy a fee on digital ad revenues from major tech companies.

In June 2025, Governor Gavin Newsom signed a package of bills that includes $15 million in expanded funding for the landmark California Local News Fellowship Program hosted by UC Berkeley, which places journalists in newsrooms around the state. The new funding supports a two-year cohort of reporting fellows to continue the program through 2028, plus support for the Maynard Institute’s Propel Initiative in collaboration with California Black Media, the Latino Media Collaborative and American Community Media. The fellowship was created in 2022 by Sen. Glazer with a $25 million allocation to UC Berkeley’s journalism school to fund at least 40 fellows in local newsrooms across the state.

AB 611, introduced by Assemblymember Alex Lee (D–San Jose) in 2025, would have required a 120-day notice before the sale of a local newsroom to a hedge fund, private equity firm or publicly traded company. The bill, sponsored by California Common Cause and supported by Rebuild Local News, was inspired by Illinois’ landmark sale-notice law. After passing the Assembly 41–14, the bill was held over in the Senate Judiciary committee until 2026.

As of July 2025, California state agencies are required to create plans to expand spending on ethnic and community media advertising after Gov. Newsom signed AB 1511, sponsored by Assemblymember Miguel Santiago (D-Los Angeles). The agencies are required to report on their progress in September 2026.

In March 2023, the San Francisco board of supervisors approved a resolution that will mandate city departments disclose how they spend their advertising budgets in addition to encouraging departments to spend at least 50% of their advertising dollars with community, ethnic and hyperlocal outlets. The provision comes just short of a mandate, but outlines strong and detailed transparency requirements. San Francisco State University has also stepped in to help implement this provision, ensuring that local news outlets get registered as city contractors and studying the level and result of city advertising spend.

In November 2025, Colorado’s Joint Budget Committee directed state agencies to report their discretionary advertising spending, and by February 2026 most agencies responded with varying levels of detail, revealing that spending public dollars on advertising with local news outlets differs significantly by agency. Rebuild Local News is analyzing the data and will report on its findings. Earlier, in 2022, Colorado legislators proposed a tax credit for small businesses that advertise in local news, modeled on the Local Journalism Sustainability Act, which passed the House Business Affairs and Labor Committee and the Finance Committee but did not advance out of House Appropriations.

On March 23, 2026, the Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee heard testimony on HB5569, a tax credit for small businesses that advertise with local news. The Committee substituted this measure in place of a journalist employment tax credit after it met opposition from Republican members. The bill is not expected to move forward.

On March 11, 2026, HB5343 passed unanimously out of the Government Administration and Elections Committee. The bill would require state agencies to publicly report their advertising spending. Government analysts are now preparing cost estimates.

In February 2026, the Connecticut General Assembly’s Higher Education and Employment Advancement Committee passed HB5159 with bipartisan support to create a journalism internship or fellowship program that would place at least 12 journalists at local news organizations. Senior Policy Manager Gene Perry testified in support.

In 2025, lawmakers introduced a slate of local news bills that ultimately did not advance, including Rep. Kate Farrar’s proposal to direct 50 percent of state agency advertising to in‑state news outlets. Farrar had pursued similar legislation in prior sessions, and although the measure cleared committee, it never reached a floor vote. She also introduced a refundable employment tax credit for in‑state news organizations, which met strong Republican opposition in the Finance Committee. Other proposals that session included HB6418, requiring 120 days’ notice before the sale of a news organization to an out‑of‑state buyer, and HB6076, which would have funded at least twelve fellowship positions for recent journalism graduates. Both bills passed their respective committees but were not called for floor votes.

The Record Journal in Meriden, Connecticut got approved for a $300,000 American Rescue Plan-funded advertising grant program, launched in 2023. Local businesses and nonprofits applied to participate in the program. Those selected received $4,000 in free advertising, $2,000 of which was paid for with city American Rescue Plan funds and another $2,000 in advertising was supplied by the Record Journal. After the costs of implementing the program over a three-month period in 2023, the publication netted $235,000. To learn more about municipal grant programs to boost small business advertising in local news, read more about communities trying this approach.

In February 2026, Hawai‘i’s House Economic Development & Technology Committee approved HB1458, legislation taxing major social media platforms’ advertising revenue to fund broadband access and local news. Policy Director Matt Pearce testified in support, and the bill now moves to the House Consumer Protection & Commerce Committee. The measure was originally introduced in 2025 by Rep. Ikaika Hussey but did not advance that session and was held over, leading to its renewed consideration this year.

In February 2026, Republican Rep. and Asst. Minority Leader Amy Elik introduced HB4869, a proposal to provide tax credits to small businesses that advertise with local news organizations. It would provide small businesses with a tax credit for their total local news advertising expenses up to $2,500, capped $3 million annually over five taxable years.

On Feb. 1, 2026, Illinois opened applications for the second year of its Local Journalism Sustainability Tax Incentive Program, which provides refundable employment tax credits to help newsrooms retain and hire reporters. In its first year, in 2025, the program awarded $4 million in credits, supporting more than 260 journalist jobs across over 120 outlets statewide, with most funding going to organizations outside the Chicago metro area and 30 percent to nonprofit outlets. Enacted in 2024, the program commits $25 million over five years and offers $15,000 per current reporter and $10,000 per new hire, with caps of $150,000 per newsroom and $250,000 per corporation. Rebuild Local News published a policy paper highlighting what’s working well and where implementation can improve.

In 2025, Gov. JB Pritzker signed Sen. Steve Stadelman’s SB213, requiring state agencies to disclose how they spend their advertising budgets, which outlets receive those funds, and to post that information on their websites each year. The first annual report on government advertising spending is due in October 2026.

In 2025, Sen. Stadelman reintroduced his Journalism Preservation Act, SB 1732, a “bargaining code” bill aimed at forcing Google and Meta to pay local newsrooms for their journalism, closely modeled on California’s similarly named legislation from 2023-2024. The bill did not advance.

The Strengthening Community Media law was enacted in 2024, requiring a 120-day notice to employees and the community before a local news organization can be sold to any company. The notice law has seen two tests so far. First, Better Newspapers, Inc., did not appear to give notice before selling several local titles to Paxton Media Group in 2025, raising questions about how the statute is to be enforced if not followed. More recently, Paddock Publications gave a 120-day notice on Jan. 6, 2026 of its intent to sell the Daily Herald, but did not disclose the name of the potential buyer.

The Strengthening Community Media law also created the groundwork for a scholarship program for journalists from Illinois colleges who pledge to work in state newsrooms. However, the program has not been funded, and Sen. Stadelman is expected to continue efforts to do so in 2026.

Local journalism advocates won an executive order in October 2022 establishing an advertising set-aside that allocates 50 percent of Chicago’s government advertising spending for community and ethnic news outlets. After then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot left office, the implementation of the order stalled. Today, the Chicago Independent Media Alliance, a coalition of publishers, and civic nonprofit Public Narrative are working with Mayor Brandon Johnson, other city leaders, and city agencies to implement the policy.

The Chicago Independent Media Alliance (CIMA), which was key in securing the policy, is now led by Public Narrative, a Chicago-based nonprofit that offers resources to promote media literacy and amplify community voices. It will monitor the city advertising efforts, including publishing an annual report on how city ad dollars are distributed to eligible news outlets.

HB2276, a tax subsidy supporting small businesses that advertise in local news, advanced to a hearing in the Committee on Taxation in February 2025 but did not pass. It carries over into the 2026 legislative session. In the meantime, coalition members led by the Kansas Press Association and Kansas Association of Broadcasters are exploring an advertising pilot program with the state’s Department of Commerce.

On September 26, 2025, Sen. Peggy Rotundo (D-Androscoggin), chair of the Senate Appropriations and Financial Affairs Committee, introduced the Maine Community News Act, a landmark effort to strengthen local journalism statewide. Because Maine’s 2026 session is limited to budget items with narrow exceptions, the Legislative Council declined the request to take up the bill. This is a model bill developed by Rebuild Local News, which will now be introduced in 2027 as the Maine Community News and Small Business Sustainability Act. It would offer refundable tax credits to help newsrooms hire and retain local journalists, and would apply to print, broadcast and digital outlets, both nonprofit and commercial.

On March 20, 2026, the Maryland Senate voted 42-0 for legislation, SB459, that would direct 50 percent of state agency advertising budgets to eligible local media. The House is now considering the bill, cross-filed with its companion proposal, HB43. The effort is being led by the MDDC Press Association, with support from Rebuild Local News. Policy Manager Lori Henson testified in both chambers. HB43 is based on a similar bill, HB1119, that Del. Foley introduced in 2025 but failed to advance by the end of the session on April 13.

In 2025, lawmakers introduced two additional local news bills that ultimately did not advance. Delegates Joe Vogel and Foley proposed HB0891, a refundable journalist employment tax credit modeled on programs in New York and Illinois. Delegate Mary Lehman introduced HB51, which would have required a 120‑day waiting period before a local news outlet could be sold to an out‑of‑state company, with notice to employees, the Maryland Department of Labor, and local county officials.

In 2023, a group of legislators led by Del. Vogel also explored HB0540, a small‑business advertising tax credit that would have provided up to $1,000 for qualified advertising with local news outlets, though the measure did not pass.

In March 2026, companion bills SF4183 and HF4072 were introduced to appropriate $500,000 from the workforce development fund for a local news talent pipeline program. The funding would support paid internships at newspapers, television and radio stations, and digital news outlets to encourage Minnesotans to pursue careers in journalism.

On Feb. 1, 2026, state agencies published advertising spending data for the first time under the transparency requirements included in the2025 omnibus budget. Rebuild Local News’ analysis of more than a dozen departments shows that those agencies spend an average of 29 percent of their ad dollars with local news outlets. The transparency language originated in SF2600, a 2025 proposal that would have required state agencies to direct 50 percent of their advertising budgets to local news. The language in the omnibus budget was softened to “encourage” agencies to advertise with local news “when practicable,” while retaining annual reporting on total spending and the share placed with local news and, specifically, local newspapers. The Minnesota Newspaper Association and Minnesota News Media Institute led the efforts to pass the transparency bill.

SB367, a statewide bill to support rural and community media, had its first hearing in March 2025 and was advanced by the Government Affairs Committee. It failed to pass the Senate Finance Committee before the session ended. The bill would have created a “Rural and Community Media Program” within the Department of Administration to help state agencies better reach historically underrepresented communities through rural and community outlets. It would have also established a local news directory, boosted transparency in government advertising, and provided training for officials on the value of investing in local media.

In January 2026, Republican Rep. Kristine Perez of Londonderry introduced HB1420 to help small businesses that advertise with local news. The bill as introduced would provide a tax credit covering 80 percent of advertising costs, up to $3,000, for small businesses that advertise in local news outlets. The House Ways and Means Committee heard testimony on the bill on Jan. 21, 2026, and formed a study committee to address concerns raised by the Department of Revenue Administration and other language changes. On March 2, 2026, Ways and Means voted to move the bill to “Interim Study” status, meaning action may resume on the bill during the fall 2026 budget process.

Companion bills were introduced in the General Assembly and Senate in March to set aside a portion of the state’s advertising budget for local news outlets. S3744 introduced by Sen. Andrew Zwicker (D – Hillsborough) and Sen. Angela McKnight (D – Jersey City) and A4677 introduced by Majority Leader Louis Greenwald (D – Voorhees) require state agencies to spend 30 percent of their advertising budgets with community and ethnic news outlets – potentially the first statewide policy to scale up the New York City advertising set-aside model pioneered by the Center for Community Media. A coalition of local publishers and Montclair State University’s Center for Cooperative Media is leading the effort to pass the policy this calendar year. The bills have not yet been assigned to committees.

New Jersey lawmakers passed a law in June 2025, effective March 1, 2026, allowing state offices to post legal notices on their own websites or digital news sites — a shift away from print that could cut into a key revenue stream for local outlets. The financial impact is uncertain: a 2016 report estimated governments spent $7.3 million annually on legal notices in newspapers, with private parties adding $24.9 million.

The New Jersey Civic Information Consortium won back $2.5 million in funding in the state budget passed in July 2025 this week after Governor Phil Murphy eliminated it in his FY2026 budget plan released in February 2025. New Jersey launched the first-of-its-kind Civic Information Consortium in 2018 to provide grants to civic information producers in the state, including newsrooms. Since then it has given out over $12 million in grants.

On March 11, 2026, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham enacted one of the most significant state investments in local journalism in the country. The package includes $4 million annually for five years in refundable employment tax credits to help newsrooms retain and hire reporters – a model long championed by Rebuild Local News – along with $1 million per year to offset wages at local news printers. The first credits will be awarded based on employment in taxable year 2027, and funds should go out to publishers after they file taxes in 2028. The state also allocated $200,000 for the New Mexico Local News Fellowship program through the Department of Workforce Solutions.

Since launching in 2019, the New Mexico Local News Fellowship has received steady, bipartisan support that has allowed the program to grow in size and scope each year. Recent state budgets have expanded the fellowship to include a statewide internship track, new community‑college–based journalism programs, and a high school journalism support initiative housed at the University of New Mexico. These investments have enabled the New Mexico Local News Fund to place more than 35 fellows and 27 interns in newsrooms across the state since 2020, strengthening local coverage and building a durable pipeline of early‑career reporters.

In February 2026, New York finalized regulations for the Empire State Newspaper and Broadcast Media Jobs Program and opened its application window, which closes on April 24. The program provides $30 million annually for three years in refundable tax credits to help eligible commercial newsrooms retain or hire staff. The program offers two credits: an existing Job Credit that subsidizes 50% of an eligible employee’s annual wages and a New Job Creation Credit that provides an additional $5,000 for every net new full-time employee.

Nonprofit news organizations remain ineligible. After a 2025 proposal passed the State Senate but stalled in the Assembly, lawmakers attempted to revive the idea through their one‑house budgets, aiming to create a parallel grant program for nonprofit outlets. Those efforts did not advance. Rebuild Local News and local partners are now pursuing stand-alone legislation, S09285 and A10330, introduced in February 2026 by Sen. Jamaal Bailey and Assemblymember Jeffrey Dinowitz. The measure is backed by leading civic groups including Common Cause, League of Women Voters, Citizens Union, PEN America, Reinvent Albany and others.

In January 2025, New York Senator Monica Martinez (D-Brentwood) introduced the Lift Our Communities Advertise Local (LOCAL) bill, S1865, that would provide tax credits for small businesses – especially women-owned, minority-owned, and disabled veteran-owned businesses that advertise in local news. The bill did not advance but was held over and referred to the Senate Commerce, Economic Development and Small Business Committee on Jan. 7, 2026, where it has not yet been heard.

In 2019, after appeals from the Newmark School of Journalism at the City University of New York, Mayor Bill de Blasio issued an executive order requiring that certain city agencies spend at least 50 percent of their advertising budgets with community newspapers. The policy provided more than $72 million to more than 100 local newsrooms since it launched.

In December 2025, the Center for Community Media (CCM) and URL Media published an open letter to newly elected Mayor Zohran Mamdani calling for stronger enforcement of Local Law 83 and greater independence and transparency for the Mayor’s Office of Ethnic and Community Media (MOECM). Since then, Mamdani has issued two executive orders moving MOECM under the newly created Office of Mass Engagement.

For Oregon’s 2026 short session, Sen. Khanh Pham re‑filed a version of her Big Tech “bargaining code” legislation that would require Google and Meta to pay for scraping local news, with revenue directed toward journalist employment subsidies and a new Civic Information Consortium housed at the University of Oregon. The bill, SB1580, faced strong opposition from tech advocates during a Feb. 11 hearing and did not advance out of committee.

The 2025 version of the bill, SB686, closely mirrored the California Journalism Preservation Act and narrowly failed in a 15–14 vote after intense pushback from Google and Meta. As an alternative that year, Senate Republicans proposed a publicly funded $50 per‑person tax credit to offset the cost of local news subscriptions or donations to nonprofit journalism and transparency organizations – an idea based on Sen. Cedric Hayden’s earlier SB57. Neither concept gained traction.

A group of lawmakers in Oregon, led by Sen. Pham, proposed legislation in 2023 that would have included an allocation to the Agora Journalism Center at the University of Oregon along with the Fund for Oregon Rural Journalism (FORJ) to study Oregon’s information needs and public policies that would address them. The bill failed.

In February 2026, Rep. Chris Rabb’s HB2047, to create a local news fellowship program placing journalists with news organizations across the state, and HB2048, to establish a New Jersey‑style grantmaking Civic Information Consortium, advanced out of the House Communications & Technology Committee on 14–12 party‑line votes, with Democrats in support and Republicans opposed. Both bills were placed on hold by the House and remain inactive with no floor vote scheduled.

On March 25, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox signed legislation passed by the Republican-led legislature assessing a tax on “targeted advertising” by mega-advertisers including major tech platforms, with proceeds dedicated to teen mental health, child literacy and “civic information programs.” The law, called a “sin tax” by its sponsors, is the first law in the country to explicitly link harms caused by Big Tech’s advertising model to investments in communities’ information needs. Rebuild Local News Chairman Steve Waldman previously outlined this concept in an op-ed for the Salt Lake Tribune, calling for a tech tax to help support teen mental health and local news. The measure will likely face legal challenges, and any direct benefits for local news providers would need additional legislative action in a future session.

The Vermont House on March 27, 2025, approved H.244, mandating 70 percent of government agency advertising budgets be spent with local news outlets. It had strong support from Republicans – including the Lieutenant Governor John Rodgers – as well as Democrats, but failed to advance in 2025. The bill sponsors, Rep. Barbara Rachelson and Rep. Chea Waters Evans, were working to attach the advertising transparency and reporting language to another bill in 2026. The Vermont Journalism Coalition is leading the effort to pass a government advertising set-aside in 2026.

In February 2026, a broad coalition of local news advocates, including Rebuild Local News, testified in support of Sen. Marko Liias’ SB5400, a proposed tax on search engines and social media companies to fund journalist employment grants. A new amendment would also allow revenue from the proposed tech tax to support Washington State University’s Murrow News Fellowship, which has partnered with Report for America to place a fellow in every Washington county by 2029. Sen. Liias has said the bill is unlikely to advance this year but will be pursued in 2027.

In 2024, the Washington State Legislature enacted a decade-long policy that waives the business and occupations tax for newspaper publishers. It would include eligible digital news outlets if they had a printed publication as recently as Jan. 1, 2008, but did not exempt digital-native publications.

In 2023, Washington’s legislature approved $2.4 million over two years to support 8 journalists a year, paid $55,000 each, through a fellowship program to be run by Washington State University. Half of the fellows were to be graduates of the University. The first six journalists began reporting in April 2024.

Ward 4 Councilmember Janeese Lewis George and Ward 1 Councilmember Brianne Nadeau reintroduced the Local News Funding Act in 2025. The bill, first introduced in 2023, would give DC residents the ability to support local newsrooms of their choice with news coupons, for a total expected subsidy of $11.6 million. The legislation was influenced by Democracy Policy Network’s Local News Dollars framework. Under the bill, every registered voter in D.C. would have received five news coupons that they can distribute to local newsrooms via a portal. The coupons don’t have an attached monetary value, but as a proportional value. After every calendar quarter, the number of news vouchers each outlet received is calculated, with newsrooms receiving a portion of available funds equivalent to the proportion of news vouchers they received.

In 2026, Democratic lawmakers filed three bills to establish a grantmaking civic information consortium, a newspaper subscription tax credit, and a journalism fellowship program at the University of Wisconsin, which would have placed local reporters in newsrooms across the state. The measures did not advance beyond their introduction.

In 2024, a group of Democrats introduced a package of policies, including a journalist fellowship program (AB 1141), a subscription tax credit (AB 1140) and a local journalism grant program modeled after the New Jersey Civic Information Consortium (SB 1042). Free Press endorsed the package and the Wisconsin Newspaper Association endorsed the fellowship bill. The bills did not advance.

In 2021, 14 Republicans and two Democrats introduced AB762, a proposal to provide a tax credit to small businesses in the state that advertised with local news outlets. The approach, based on the federal Local Journalism Sustainability Act, drew support not only from journalism groups but also associations representing restaurants, bars, and banks. The bill had a hearing in 2022, but didn’t pass. The bill was once again pursued during the 2023 legislative session, but did not become law.