SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California will be the first U.S. state to dedicate millions of dollars in taxpayer and tech company money to help fund journalism and AI research under a new deal announced Wednesday.
Under the first-of-its-kind deal in the United States, the state and tech companies will collectively contribute about $250 million over five years to support California-based news organizations and create an AI research program. The initiatives are expected to begin in 2025, with $100 million in the first year, and the majority of the money will go to news organizations, said Democratic Rep. Buffy Wicks, who negotiated the deal.
“This agreement represents a major step forward in ensuring the survival of newsrooms and strengthening local journalism in California by harnessing the substantial resources of the tech industry without imposing new taxes on Californians,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement. “The agreement not only provides funding to support hundreds of new journalists, but also helps rebuild a strong and vibrant California news corps for years to come, reinforcing journalism’s vital role in our democracy.”
Wicks’ office did not immediately respond to questions about the specifics of how much funding would come from the state, which news organizations would be eligible and how much money would go to the AI research program.
The agreement effectively marks the end of a year long fight between tech giants and lawmakers over Wicks’ proposal demand from businesses like Google, Facebook and Microsoft, which pay a certain percentage of advertising revenue to media companies to link to their content.
The bill, modeled on Canadian legislation aimed at providing financial assistance to local news organizations, has faced a strong backlash from the tech industry, which Announcements launched over the summer to attack the bill. Google also tried to pressure lawmakers to drop the bill by temporarily removing news sites based on some people’s search results in April.
“This partnership represents a cross-sector commitment to support a free and vibrant press, enabling local media across the state to continue their essential work,” Wicks said in a statement. “This is just the beginning.”
California has tried various measures to stem the loss of journalism jobs, which are disappearing rapidly as traditional media outlets struggle to capitalize on the digital age. More than 2,500 newspapers have closed in the United States since 2005, according to Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. California has lost more than 100 news organizations in the past decade, according to Wicks’ office.
The deal signed Wednesday is supported by the California News Publishers Association, which represents more than 700 news organizations, Alphabet, Google’s parent company, and OpenAI. But journalists, including those from the Media Guild of the West, have sharply criticized the deal and said it would hurt California news organizations.
Sen. Steve Glazer, the author of a bill to give news organizations a tax credit for hiring full-time journalists, said the deal “seriously undermines our work toward a long-term solution to save independent journalism.”
State Senate President Pro Tempore Mike McGuire also said the deal doesn’t go far enough to address California’s dire situation.
“Newsrooms have been gutted across the state while tech platforms have reaped billions of dollars in profits,” he said in a statement. “We are concerned that this proposal will not adequately fund local newspapers and media outlets and will not fully address the inequities the industry faces.”
