State Activity Tracker

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 has been held over in the Senate Judiciary committee until 2026.

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.

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 proposal represents a new approach to leverage local advertising dollars. The provision comes just short of a mandate, but outlines strong and detailed transparency requirements that will give local news outlets a better bargaining position in increasing city advertising spending. San Francisco State University has also stepped in to help implement this provision, ensuring that local news outlets get registered as city contractors, an important first step in accessing city advertising dollars, and studying the level and result of city advertising spend.

Colorado state legislators proposed a tax credit for small businesses to advertise in local news in 2022, based on the Local Journalism Sustainability Act in 2022. It drew support not only from journalism groups but from the League of Women Voters of Colorado. It passed the House Business Affairs and Labor committee as well as the Finance Committee but failed to pass the House Appropriations Committee. The Coalition testified in support and worked closely with the Colorado Press Association.

The state introduced a handful of local news bills in 2025, which did not pass. SB1230 was introduced by State Rep. Kate Farrar (D-West Hartford, Newington). It called for a government advertising set-aside of 50 percent of some state agency ad budgets for local news outlets owned by in-state entities. Farrar introduced a similar bill in 2023 and 2024 – a state-level version of a policy implemented in New York in 2020 that mandates a certain proportion of government advertising spending go to local news outlets. It would have limited the benefits to publications owned and operated in the state of Connecticut. After passing the joint Government Administration and Elections Committee and generating a groundswell of support from local publishers, the bill has failed to get called for a floor vote each session.

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.

The Record Journal in Meriden, Connecticut got approved for a $300,000 American Rescue Plan-funded advertising grant program. 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, the publication netted $235,000. American Rescue Plan funds are still available until the end of 2024. To learn how you can adapt the program, read Rebuild Local News’ bulletin.

HB 1458, introduced in 2025 by Representative Ikaika Hussey (D), proposed taxing ad revenue earned in Hawaii by large social media platforms that have over one million users in the U.S. The funds would have been used to expand broadband access and support local journalism, but the bill did not advance out of committee.

In 2025, the legislature passed SB213, which requires transparency and annual reporting on government advertising spending. The bill, introduced by Sen. Steve Stadelman, passed both legislative houses in May and was sent to Gov. Pritzker on June 18 for his signature. The first annual report on government advertising spending is due in October 2026.

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. So far, Illinois has approved 49 of the 61 applicants, with 40 of them collectively receiving $4 million in credits. Recipients include major legacy outlets, small community papers, digital start-ups and public broadcasters, with most funding going to organizations outside the Chicago metro and 30% to nonprofit outlets.

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.

Local journalism advocates passed an advertising set-aside in Chicago in October 2022 via executive order. Chicago Independent Media Alliance, a coalition of publishers, secured an allocation of 50% of Chicago’s government advertising spending for community and ethnic news outlets. Mayor Brandon Johnson has indicated that he will reissue this policy in 2025.

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.

HB2276, a tax subsidy supporting small businesses that advertise in local news, advanced to a hearing in the Committee on Taxation in February but did not pass. Notable was the GOP-led committee support for the bill hearing – an important first step to passage. The Kansas coalition continues working with small businesses to push the bill forward in a difficult budget environment; it stays alive 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.

A handful of local news bills were introduced in Maryland in 2025, with all ultimately falling short of passage this session. Delegate Linda Foley’s newly introduced HB 1119 would require state agencies to set aside 50% of their advertising budgets for local news outlets. The bill was heard in the Assembly Health and Government Operations Committee on March 10, but ultimately failed to advance by the session’s end on April 7.

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 subscription tax credit originally proposed in the Local Journalism Sustainability Act was introduced into the Massachusetts House of Representatives. It would offer Massachusetts citizens a $250 refundable tax credit if they purchased subscriptions in local digital or print outlets. As introduced, it’s unclear if the bill would include donations to nonprofit newsrooms, but the sponsoring legislator, Jeffrey Rosario Turco (D-Suffolk), has said the bill will likely be amended as it continues through the legislative process. Later in the session, a version of the Local Journalism Sustainability Act was also introduced.

Government advertising transparency requirements were added to the 2025 omnibus budget that passed in a special session. The transparency language was initially part of a government advertising set-aside bill, SF2600, that required state agencies to direct 50% of their advertising budgets to local news; the language in the omnibus budget was softened to “encourage” government agencies to advertise with local news “when practicable.” Both versions required the state to annually report on the percentage of advertising placed with local news and, specifically, with local newspapers, as well as the total spend on advertising. The omnibus budget bill, SF3045, passed and the first transparency reporting is due February 1, 2026. 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.

New Jersey lawmakers have passed a law, 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 this week after Governor Phil Murphy eliminated it in his FY2026 budget plan released in February. 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 $1 million in grants.

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.

New Mexico’s newly approved 2025-2026 state budget will direct $350,000 to the University of Mexico for an expanded fellowship and internship program and for the launch of a high school journalism support program, according to Rashad Mahmood, executive director at New Mexico Local News Fund, which has operated the state’s local news fellowship since 2019. Another $150,000 will be allocated to support community journalism programs based at community colleges.

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 May 2024, the state included the Newspaper and Broadcast Media Jobs Program in the budget, allocating $90 million over three years to New York newsrooms based on the number of employees and their compensation. The program will undergo a regulatory process this summer where stakeholders can weigh in on how it will be implemented. The bill went into effect on January 1, 2025. The proposal from Rebuild Local News to include nonprofit news organizations in the law has stalled. Although the bill passed the State Senate, it did not advance in the Assembly. Advocates are reviewing the outcome and considering next steps.

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.

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% of their advertising budgets with community newspapers. The policy succeeded in providing more than $72 million to more than 100 local newsrooms since it launched. Learn more.

Oregon Senator Khanh Pham’s SB 686, a near-copycat of the defunct California Journalism Preservation Act (AB 886), failed in the Senate by a narrow 15–14 vote on June 24, 2025, following intense opposition from Google and Meta. SB 686 proposed a complex structure to require the two tech platforms to pay for accessing and crawling local publishers’ journalism, including for AI development. Publishers that don’t hold commercial agreements with the platforms could sue for civil damages, while the platforms could avoid litigating by choosing between paying the local news industry through 1) voluntary contributions totaling more than $100 million a year or 2) a “bargaining code” arbitration process to compensate news organizations for content. In the event of a settlement, 90% of the funds would be distributed as a payroll subsidy supporting Oregon journalists, and the other 10% would fund a new, independent grantmaking Civic Information Consortium hosted by the University of Oregon.

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.

Representative Christopher Rabb (D-Philadephia) is expecting to introduce two bills to create a journalist fellowship program and a grantmaking nonprofit civic information consortium in Pennsylvania, according to a July 28, 2025 memo to House members. The consortium would be based on the New Jersey Civic Information Consortium and distribute public dollars in the form of grants to local newsrooms and organizations focused on filling the most critical information gaps facing Pennsylvanians, Rabb said, and the fellowship program would place early-career journalists in community newsrooms across the state.

Washington’s SB 5400, introduced in 2025, would have put a tax surcharge on search engine and social media companies, capped at $6 million per company, to generate funding for a state-managed journalism grant program. The bill died without advancing out of the Senate Ways and Means committee after advancing out of the Senate Committee on Labor & Commerce.

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.

Ward 4 Councilmember Janeese Lewis George and Ward 1 Councilmember Brianne Nadeau reintroduced the Local News Funding Act in 2025. The first-of-its-kind bill, first introduced in 2023, gives 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.

Fourteen Republicans and two Democrats introduced AB762 in 2021, 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.

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.

The Vermont House on March 27 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. “It just makes sense to me and many other Vermonters that Vermont government ought to be supporting Vermont businesses at each and every opportunity,” Rodgers said. The bill failed to advance in the Senate before session’s end on May 9, but stays alive into the 2026 session. Bill sponsors, Rep. Barbara Rachelson and Rep. Chea Waters Evans are working to attach the advertising transparency and reporting language to another bill in 2026.