Editorial: Significant journalism bill nears the finish line

The challenges facing the local news industry are well known but still worth revisiting. On average, 2.5 newspapers have shut down every week across the United States over the past two decades.

The recently-released 2026 Local Journalist Index report, produced by Rebuild Local News and Muck Rack, revealed a shortage of local journalists, with the national average now 7.8 Local Journalist Equivalents (LJEs) per 100,000 residents, a decrease of 81% from approximately 40 per 100,000 in 2002. 

This downward trend in the number of journalists employed in the U.S. is accelerating; the 2025 report stated the national average of the equivalent number of LJEs was 8.2 per 100,000 residents. 

Despite the wealth in our region, Alameda County falls below the national average, at 6.7 LJEs per 100,000 residents. Even more appalling, Contra Costa County averages 3.5 LJEs per 100,000 residents.

For years, some in the state Legislature have been attempting to pass bills that would offer support to remaining publishers like Embarcadero Media. There were attempts to tax Big Tech players that met large lobbying resistance, questions about how to make sure the California government couldn’t meddle with publishers’ editorial independence and the concern of how to ensure the program didn’t become a payday for hedge-fund-owned news organizations that could still continue to cut their local reporting staff while relying on remote contractors to rehash others’ original reporting.

Fortunately, all of these complications have been addressed in Assemblymember Christopher Ward’s Community NEWS Act (AB 2222). The bill would provide tax credits to all publishers incorporated in California who employ journalists in the state. Each reporting position could qualify for $15,000 to $20,000, depending on the size of the publisher. We expect that this could add up to about $400,000 for Embarcadero Media. That is money that we would look to invest in hiring additional reporters across our communities. 

The bill is projected to cost the state about $40 million a year, financed through a measure that would end corporate tax breaks for executive compensation above $1 million, aligning California’s tax rules with federal law.

And with the recent Meta settlement and billions of dollars that will be paid to states, there would be some poetic justice for some of those funds to go toward a better-informed public.

AB 2222 was passed with bipartisan supermajorities out of the California Legislature on Aug. 31 and now sits on Gov. Newsom’s desk. He has a couple more weeks to sign the bill into law.

We trust Newsom will do the right thing and follow the lead of the Legislature, whose members represent the people and communities they come from. He must sign this bill and build in permanent support for the only industry protected by the Constitution of the United States.

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