Rebuild Local News Calls on Connecticut Lawmakers to Bring Transparency to State Ad Spending

On March 4, Policy Manager Lori Henson testified before Connecticut’s Government Administration and Elections Committee in support of HB5343, a bill requiring government agencies to publicly report how they spend their advertising dollars:

Chairs Flexer and Blumenthal, and members of the Committee,

My name is Lori Henson and I am a policy manager with Rebuild Local News. We are the leading nonpartisan nonprofit coalition representing 3,000 newsrooms and more than 15,000 journalists. We develop and advocate for effective public policies designed to strengthen community news and information. In that role, I ask you to advance HB5343, which requires government agencies to publicly report how they spend their advertising budgets, which we believe would benefit community news organizations and the public alike.

HB5343 adds transparency and accountability to an otherwise opaque process of advertising procurement. It sounds obvious that the public would be able to track the specific media companies where public dollars are being spent on ads. But in Connecticut and in nearly every state in the nation, this information can be hard to find with existing tools such as the Freedom of Information Act, state procurement databases, and even individual marketing contracts. Advertising and marketing agencies often effectively decide where to spend public dollars, whether with community media or, as is often the case, with Big Tech or national cable channels – out of the public eye and outside the public record.

Making this information public is essential because of the unrealized opportunities it would create for Connecticut communities and their local news outlets, many of which are small businesses. Similar policies to HB5343 have been enacted recently in Minnesota, Illinois and California. In Minnesota, the first of these states to disclose public agency ad data, we found that the state’s public agencies were only collectively spending less than 30% of their budgets advertising in community news organizations, with the rest likely going to various out-of-state national media outlets or Big Tech platforms. Although several Minnesota agencies chose to spend most of their taxpayer dollars supporting local news businesses, we found many public agencies seeming to overlook those local news businesses almost entirely.

We believe that under the current unclear system of advertising procurement, taxpayer dollars are disproportionately leaving the state for Silicon Valley. The Google and Meta duopoly dominate the digital advertising space nationally, capturing fully half the digital advertising market in the United States, sometimes at above-market-rate monopoly prices. We believe that the State of Connecticut may also spend a significant proportion of agencies’ advertising budgets with these tech giants, but without transparency, we have no good way to know how much taxpayer money they benefit from.

This information is critical at this specific moment – as local news outlets across the state struggle to provide communities with essential news and information against increasingly tight revenue projections. A study by Rebuild Local News and Muck Rack found that Connecticut ranks in the bottom third of states in the number of journalists per capita. Another study found that between 2013 and 2023, Connecticut lost 65 percent of its journalists – more than 1,800 jobs. This is not just a crisis for local news organizations, but for the communities they serve.

Communities without a local news source face higher borrowing costs, lower voter turnout, fewer choices of candidates on the ballot, more political polarization, more government waste and corruption and more corporate crime. Local news benefits communities in countless ways.

But it’s difficult for these community news outlets to compete for money they don’t know exists. HB5343 would inform the public and their local newsrooms how much agency advertising money has been budgeted, allowing local news outlets to better compete for those dollars. As with any “buy local” initiative, it is good policy to give Connecticut media outlets an even playing field to compete with Big Tech and other media conglomerates.

Without this information, government agencies are also at a disadvantage – not knowing how the agencies they contract with to place advertising are spending agency money. The option to buy local is out of their hands without a transparent advertising placement process.

Where government agencies have prioritized local news advertising – setting aside a percentage for community news – the results are astonishing. In New York City, where half of the city’s advertising money is set aside for community and ethnic news outlets, more than $72 million has been directed to local news since 2020. Small publishers including the Haitian Times have been able to add staff and improve news coverage because of the additional revenue. The policy has also diversified the range of news outlets receiving advertising.

But knowing what resources are available, and where they are currently being directed, is an important first step to making local news outlets more competitive in the advertising marketplace.

I urge the Committee to advance the bill, not just for the health of Connecticut local news, but for the health of Connecticut communities.