The bipartisan Illinois Local Journalism Task Force has announced a series of possible legislative steps, including tax credits, exemptions, grants and other measures, to address a local news crisis that has hit the state particularly hard.
“Illinois has lost 232 newspapers since 2005,” Task Force Chair and Illinois State Sen. Steve Stadelman said at the Jan. 17 news conference announcing the recommendations, which are included in a newly released task force report on the issue. “The state has lost 85% of its newspaper journalists, the highest percentage in the country. Five of Illinois’ 102 counties have no local source of news, and 33 rely on just a single source. In too many towns, there’s no one covering local city council meetings, and no one is covering local school board meetings. How can residents know what’s going on and make informed decisions?”
Illinois is now one of more than a dozen states to take up potential public policy to address the loss of local news sources around the nation. The Community News and Small Business Support Act also is pending in Congress to help support local news nationally. The Medill State of Local News Report, published in November, found that 2.5 newspapers are disappearing on average every week in the U.S., and that more than half of counties have no or very limited access to local news.
The report provided a menu of possible legislation for the Illinois legislature to consider. Each suggestion is accompanied by a detailed assessment of its pros and cons and, where possible, a cost estimate. The ideas include:
Subscription tax credits. This option would provide tax credits to state residents who subscribe to digital or print media, providing money to local news economies in the form of subscriptions.
Advertising tax credits. These would go to small businesses that advertise in local news outlets. Decisions about which news organizations benefit would be made by businesses rather than government officials.
Labor/payroll tax credits. These would incentivize hiring, retention and fair pay of local journalists, bringing more local journalists into the industry.
Tax exemptions. Local news outlets could be exempted from state business and occupation (B&O) taxes, giving existing newsrooms more slack in their budgets to retain journalists and to produce their news products.
Advertising set-asides. These would mandate that a percentage (often at least 50%) of government advertising dollars to be spent on ads in local news/media outlets.
Grant programs and consortiums. Organizations or committees funded by state and/or private funding would provide resources and support to local news or public information initiatives through grants.
Fellowships. Fellowship programs would designate funds to pay early-career journalists to work in local newsrooms in Illinois in partnership with a university. Newsrooms would have the benefit of university partnerships that encourage students to consider journalism as a career.
Revenue from Big Tech. The task force is weighing ways in which news outlets might compel Big Tech companies to share advertising revenue they collect from news content on their sites.
“Replanting.” Rebuild Local News, a nonprofit that advocates for public-policy solutions to boost community journalism, has pushed the idea of “replanting,” or incentivizing communities to keep their paper ownership local and out of the hands of newspaper barons and private equity firms.
“The next step is the introduction of legislation,” Stadelman said. “I will be moving a bill forward in the next couple of days that will address many of the recommendations in the task force report.”
Task force member Jenna Dooley, past president of the Illinois News Broadcasters Association, noted that the news crisis in Illinois is affecting broadcast newsrooms as well as print. She also shared some of the rationale behind the task force’s policy suggestions.
“The recommendations in our report focus on a range of possible solutions involving the newsroom and the classroom,” Dooley said. “They acknowledge the crisis while connecting a few dots on the assets and opportunities in front of us as a state. I’m eager to see how they’re received and what additional ideas they generate.”
The Local Journalism Task Force was created through an Illinois General Assembly bill signed into law in 2021. It was charged with conducting a “comprehensive, nonbinding study relative to communities underserved by local journalism in Illinois” and making public policy recommendations for alleviating the problems. The task force’s members represent a wide range of stakeholders spanning state government, the news media and academia.
In addition to the recommendations, the task force’s report outlines familiar factors in the national and local news crisis, such as the shift to digital readership and social media, the move away from advertising revenue and the draconian cost-cutting instituted by news chains and hedge funds that have taken ownership of many newsrooms.
At the news conference, task force member Tim Franklin, director of the Medill Local News Initiative and the John M. Mutz Chair in Local News at Northwestern University, stressed the urgency of implementing the report’s policy recommendations.
“If the trends related to the news crisis here are not reversed, Illinois communities will suffer the consequences,” Franklin said. “There will be less accountability over local governments, and people will be less informed about their officials’ activities. They will feel even more disconnected and polarized than they already do.”