Editorial: Covid, other pressures shouldn’t stop the presses

By The Herald Editorial Board

Imagine the past pandemic year without finding a newspaper on — OK, near — your doorstep each morning or a click away on a newspaper’s app on your smartphone.

Where would you have found easily accessible and reliable news about the coronavirus pandemic; what the county infection case counts were; what restrictions were in place; where vaccines were available that day and how the reopening of schools and businesses was progressing? And what else was going on in our lives that offered a break from thinking about the pandemic?

For Daily Herald subscribers — in print and online — the threat that the paper’s daily coverage might be a casualty of covid didn’t materialize, though The Herald, like many other news media outlets faced cutbacks that meant layoffs and furloughs for some and trimmed hours for others. And sadly, some weeklies owned by The Daily Herald’s parent, Sound Publishing, have temporarily suspended print and online publication, notably the Marysville Globe and Arlington Times; with hopes for a resumption soon of publication.

But many other newspapers in the U.S. were shuttered for good, some the only source of news for those communities; some that had operated for 100 years or longer.

Over the course of the pandemic, more than 70 local newsrooms in the United States have closed, reports the Poynter Institute, in an account updated at the end of April.

And the pandemic sped up the rate of closures that since the turn of this century has steadily separated communities from local journalism; since 2004, the Poynter report said, about 1,800 newspapers have closed across the country, with the loss of about 40,000 jobs for reporters, editors, photographers and others; about 60 percent of that earlier workforce. What remains are about 30,000 newsroom workers in the U.S.

Already facing declining advertising revenues from online competitors, the pandemic has opened the spigot on revenue losses for U.S. newspapers even further. Rather than an anticipated 25 percent decline between the first quarter of 2019 and the end of 2022 — a worrying enough drop — those revenue losses are now estimated to end 2022 down 45 percent to 57 percent, according to an October 2020 report by the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, led by the committee’s chairwoman, U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash.

Cantwell, in response to that report, spoke last week before a newspaper industry group, America’s Newspapers, offering proposals that could help in the short-term and long-term to stem the closures of print, online and broadcast newsrooms across the country.

For the industry’s most immediate needs, Cantwell said she would seek about $2.3 billion in tax credits and grants for local newspapers and broadcasters as part of President Biden’s jobs and infrastructure proposal, recognizing them as part of the nation’s democratic infrastructure.

“We want to make sure you don’t lose any more during this next two to three years,” Cantwell said of the short-term assistance to keep newspapers in business.

In coming weeks, Cantwell also said, her committee would be holding hearings on issues related to trust concerns and unfair market practices that have resulted from the entry of social media outlets, such as Facebook and Google.

As we’ve noted before, it’s not that journalism isn’t making money, it’s that those producing the journalism aren’t the ones seeing the bulk of that revenue. It’s Facebook, Google and others who have figured out how to monetize the journalistic work of local media. Using the advantage of their millions of users and the personal data that users have obligingly provided, Big Tech wields that data to target advertising, piggybacking it on the journalism that their users are increasingly looking for.

The commerce committee report found that Google and Facebook, alone, control 77 percent of the locally focused digital advertising revenue.

Legislation is being considered, Cantwell said, “while the Department of Justice and others look at the legal remedies to help get a more level playing field with the industry and tech sector.”

Cantwell didn’t discuss specific legislation, but among bills proposed this year and last:

The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, reintroduced this year by bipartisan sponsors in the Senate and House, would allow the newspaper industry to collectively bargain with the big tech companies for a share of the advertising revenue, giving them a four-year window — free from antitrust regulation — to negotiate a deal.

The Local Journalism Sustainability Act would establish tax credit programs that would encourage local news subscribers and businesses to support local publications. Businesses of less than 1,000 employees would be eligible for a five-year tax credit to purchase advertising in local newspapers and online news media; subscribers to local media would be eligible for a five-year tax credit of $250 annually to support subscriptions to local publications; and local newspapers and other media would be eligible for a tax credit of up to $50,000 to be used as compensation to hire local journalists.

“Local news needs new laws and regulations to make sure it can compete fairly and provide its true value to local communities and American democracy,” concludes the Senate commerce committee report.

This week alone Daily Herald readers have followed reports about planned expansion of businesses at Marysville’s and Arlington’s Cascade Industrial Center; coverage of criminal trials; the 40th vintage of Snohomish’s renowned Quil Ceda Creek winery; the high school athlete of the week; the crash of a Tesla on “autopilot” into a sheriff deputy’s patrol car in Lake Stevens; plans by Alaska Airlines to double its Paine Field flight schedule this summer; a three-day series on the geologic faults beneath Snohomish County communities and their earthquake threats to the region; and our continuing coronavirus coverage.

Those are reports that at best you’d see given a few paragraphs or a few seconds of coverage by other media, if covered at all. Which explains the importance of local news providers, here and elsewhere.

Cantwell’s attention and proposals of support for local journalism are needed and welcomed and should be joined by others in the state’s congressional delegation.