STATE ACTIVITY TRACKER
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 will support a two-year cohort of reporting fellows to continue the program through 2028. Additional leadership and sustainability training will be provided by the Maynard Institute’s Propel Initiative, in collaboration with California Black Media, the Latino Media Collaborative and American Community Media. The program was created in 2022 with a $25 million allocation to UC Berkeley’s journalism school to fund at least 40 fellows in local newsrooms across the state.
On May 21, 2025, Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D–Oakland) announced that the California State Library would host the proposed California Civic Media Fund, which would include two separate subsidies: $10 million in state funding distributed as targeted grants by the State Librarian, and $10 million from Google allocated to publishers based on the number of journalists they employ, overseen by an industry board. This reflects a reduced commitment from the original proposal, which had pledged $30 million from the state and $15 million from Google. The program is expected to be created by a budget trailer bill to be introduced later in 2025.
The Civic Media Fund comes from a 2024 agreement with Google that led to the shelving of two key bills: AB 886, which sought to secure funding for local news through tech platform agreements or fees, and SB 1327, which aimed to levy a fee on digital ad revenues from major tech companies. As part of the deal, Google also committed to continuing its Google News Initiative and Showcase investments as well as participating in as-yet-to-be codified “National AI Accelerator.” However, no further details have since been released about the AI program.
As of July 1, 2025, California state agencies are now 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), in September 2024. The passage of this policy was driven by the leadership of the Latino Media Collaborative, California Black Media, and Ethnic Media Services.
Rebuild Local News partnered with independent news organizations in Connecticut to once again advance the policy. Other local news bills introduced by Rep. Farrar in Connecticut in 2025 included HB5878, a refundable employment tax credit for news organizations. It would establish a refundable tax credit to news organizations that cover local communities in the state, in the amount of $15,000 per journalist employed in the state by such organization and $25,000 per new journalist hired in the state by such organization, with a cap on the amount a news organization is allowed of $150,000. The bill met strong Republican opposition in the Finance committee and did not advance; advocates succeeded in getting the bill to a hearing and plan to pursue bipartisan support for the employment tax credit in future sessions.
Other bills introduced in the 2025 session included HB6418, which requires 120 days’ notice before the sale of a news organization to an out-of-state buyer. Under this bill, no owner of a news organization that primarily serves any community in the state may sell the organization to an entity not incorporated in the state without providing at least 120 days’ advance notice to the organization’s employees and community members; the bill passed the Labor committee, but did not get called for a floor vote. Another bill, HB6076, would have established and fund at least twelve fellowship positions in local newsrooms for recent graduates of journalism programs at public institutions of higher education. The bill passed out of the Higher Education Committee, but did not get called for a floor vote.
Sen. Stadelman also 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.
In May 2024, the Illinois Legislature created a refundable employment tax credit to support local news, committing $25 million over five years for newsrooms hiring or retaining local reporters. The Local Journalism Sustainability Tax Incentive Program is available to for-profit and nonprofit organizations with at least one full-time local reporter, providing $15,000 per current reporter and $25,000 per new hire. There is a $150,000 limit on how much a single newsroom can receive, and a $250,000 limit for any given corporation. The Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity recently notified local newsrooms about their eligibility and the expected sums to be received on a quarterly basis going forward.
Additionally, 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. This “replanting” provision, the first of its kind to be passed, gives the community time to organize an acquisition bid to keep local news in local hands.
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 Senator Stadelman will continue efforts to do so in 2026.
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 oversee the policy’s implementation, including publishing an annual report on how city ad dollars are distributed to eligible news outlets. Chicago’s initiative is the first government advertising set-aside since New York’s Advertising Boost Initiative, which has already steered millions to community news outlets.
A refundable journalist employment tax credit, HB0891, similar to those enacted in New York and Illinois, was introduced by Delegates Vogel and Foley. Newsrooms could claim up to $25,000 per journalist covering local news in Maryland for the first year of the program and then $15,000 for each following year. The bill is not likely to advance this year.
A local news bill introduced by Delegate Mary Lehman in 2025 would create a 120-day waiting period before a local news outlet could sell to an out-of-state company. Under the proposed bill, HB 51, local news organizations would be required to notify employees, the Maryland Department of Labor, and the local county government. This policy mirrors a similar law passed in Illinois in 2024, crafted by Rebuild Local News founder Steve Waldman endorsed the bill at a January 22 hearing before the House Economic Matters Committee. The Maryland bill failed to advance out of the House Committee on Economic Matters.
A tax credit for small businesses that advertise with local news was introduced in 2023 by six legislators, led by Del. Joe Vogel (D-Rockville). HB0540 would have provided a $1,000 tax credit to local businesses who advertise in qualifying local media and $500 in the subsequent years. The bill stalled after the hearing due to the calculated costs of the bill, a familiar issue with the advertising tax credit.
The coalition, led by local publishers and the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University, is now pursuing a government advertising set-aside bill modeled after New York City’s Local Law 83. That bill is expected to be introduced in fall 2025.
In total, the fellowship has placed 18 New Mexico university graduates in local newsrooms. During the 2024 legislative session, the state committed another $200,000 to the program over the next two years. This comes after the legislature appropriated $125,000 during the 2023 legislative session, a measure that won bipartisan support from the Senate Tax, Business and Transportation committee. The funds have helped the New Mexico Fund for Local News add more fellows to the program.
Two larger news labor subsidy bills introduced by New Mexico Senator and Democratic Floor Leader Peter Wirth failed to make it out of the legislature before the end of the state’s 2025 session.
SB 110 was a refundable local journalist employment tax credit similar to previous employment credits passed in New York and Illinois. It proposed up to $4 million in new annual labor subsidies through 2030 to subsidize as many as 266 New Mexico local journalists per year. SB 110 would have credited up to $15,000 per journalist (30% of a journalist’s wage, capped at $50,000) on a first-come, first-serve basis.
SB 111 was a similar tax credit, creating up to $1 million in new annual support for New Mexico news printers who have been operating in the state for the past five years. The bill would have granted $10,000 per printing employee who works more than 20 hours weekly and $5,000 per printing employee who works less than 20 hours weekly.
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 tax credit provides up to $10 million a year for eligible businesses to claim a credit equaling eighty percent of their local media advertising expenditures up to $5,000. Rebuild Local News Coalition endorses the legislation.
In February 2025, Senator Rachel May introduced S4401, the latest “bargaining code” bill creating an arbitration mechanism for news publishers to seek compensation from Big Tech, primarily Google. Notably, S4401 is not locally focused and lacks many of the journalist employment, labor spending and transparency requirements of its sibling bills in California, Illinois and Oregon. The bill did not advance.
Sen. Pham’s legislation drew support from a broad statewide coalition of journalists, labor unions, publishers, academics and local foundations, in part because it combined a journalist employment subsidy with creation of a grant program to support smaller publications. Sen. Pham said she plans to reintroduce the bill in a future session but was not clear on when.
As an alternative to passing Senator Pham’s bill, Republicans in the Senate minority counter-proposed a publicly funded $50 per-person tax credit program to offset either the cost of Oregon local news subscriptions or donations to nonprofit journalism support or transparency organizations. Nonprofit newsrooms without subscription programs appear to have been excluded. The Republican counter-proposal is based on Senator Cedric Hayden’s SB 57, which was introduced earlier in the session but did not advance.
A group of lawmakers in Oregon 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). The bill failed. Originally the bill also included a tax credit for people to subscribe or donate to local news outlets, but lead sponsor Pham said during a hearing that the subscription tax credit would be struck from the bill. If passed, the Agora Journalism Center would have used the allocation to study Oregon’s information needs and public policies that would best address them. Additionally, the amended bill would have also funded the Fund for Oregon Rural Journalism and Agora to create a local journalism resource center to help fill urgent newsroom needs around the state.
The Washington State Legislature passed a decade-long policy in 2024 that completely waives the business and occupations tax for newspaper publishers. It would also include eligible digital news outlets if they had a printed publication as recently as Jan. 1, 2008. The Senate bill was sponsored by Senator Mark Mullet (D-Issaquah), and the House companion bill by Rep. Gerry Pollet (D-Seattle). It passed the Washington Senate 47-1 and, more recently, passed out of the House of Representatives 89-7. Governor Jay Inslee signed the bill into law; it went into effect in January 2024.
Washington’s legislature approved $2.4 million over two years in 2023 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 will be graduates of the University. The first six journalists began reporting in April 2024.
Meanwhile, a group of Democrats introduced a package of policies, including a fellowship program, a subscription tax credit and a local journalism grant program modeled after the New Jersey Civic Information Consortium, during the 2024 session. Free Press has endorsed the package and the Wisconsin Newspaper Association has endorsed the fellowship program component of the bill.