Rebuild Local News Coalition Calls on Congress to Include Local News in Infrastructure Bill

“Local news is a pillar of democracy’s civic infrastructure — and it is crumbling,” began a letter addressed to Senator Majority Leader Charles Schumer, Senator Mitch McConnell, Speaker of the House Rep. Nancy Pelosi, and Rep. Kevin McCarthy.

The letter went on to describe how some 1,800 communities have lost their news outlets in recent decades, creating a vacuum that is being filled by “social media, partisan hyperbole, and harmful disinformation.” This crisis has only been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The infrastructure bill is called the ‘American Jobs Plan.’ Supporting local news preserve jobs, to be sure. But it is more than that, as it will also help local communities thrive and democracy endure. We urge you to include measures in the infrastructure bill that reinvigorate local news.”

Attentive to concerns that government assistance to the news media can be harmful if done the wrong way, the coalition stated that “the crisis in local news has become so severe we believe urgent action is necessary — and can, indeed, be done in a content-neutral, nonpartisan way, minimizing the risk of government favoritism or interference.”

They went on to note that this would not be the first time public policy has assisted journalism, referencing how the “Founding Fathers provided content-neutral support to newspapers, through the Postal Service, because they viewed it as essential infrastructure for a healthy republic.”

The Rebuild Local News Coalition is composed of organizations representing weekly newspapers, nonprofit websites, Black newspaper publishers, Hispanic publishers, independent news websites, free speech advocates, public radio stations, national nonprofit groups, daily newspapers and leading funders of local journalism innovation.

Signatories to the letter are: National Newspaper Association; Local Independent Online News Publishers; Institute for Nonprofit News; National Association of Hispanic Publications; The NewsGuild / CWA; Local Media Consortium; National Federation of Community Broadcasters; Association of Alternative Newsmedia; Report for America / The GroundTruth Project; American Journalism Project; Public Knowledge; PEN America; Solutions Journalism Network; Lenfest Institute for Journalism; and Free Press Action.

The coalition is coordinated by Steven Waldman, co-founder and president of Report for America, and author of the Federal Communications Commission’s 2011 landmark report on local news and public policy, “Information Needs of Communities: The changing media landscape in a broadband age.”

“This is an incredibly broad range of groups representing local news — rural and urban, nonprofit and commercial, newspapers and digital-first websites, large and especially small,” Waldman said. “The crisis affects all of us which is why the response seems to be so nonpartisan and broad “

Learn more about the coalition and its policy proposals at rebuildlocalnews.org.

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Media contact: Sam Kille, skille@reportforamerica.org