Wisconsin’s three local journalism bills are a flawed but useful starting point

We should publicly fund journalism, and think bigger about transforming the structure of media ownership.

Three Democratic state legislators are pitching their newly introduced “Local Journalism Package” as an effort to patch up news media around Wisconsin so that reporters can better inform the electorate and serve the public interest. The package consists of three bills. The first  would create a state tax credit for Wisconsinites who subscribe to newspapers. A second would create a state-funded fellowship program for early-career journalists. A third would create a new Wisconsin Civic Information Consortium Board (CIC), within the UW System, which would distribute grant funding to support journalism projects around the state.

This legislation offers some good approaches for more public support of local journalism. It also has some massive vulnerabilities, given that the large publicly traded newspaper chains Gannett and Lee Enterprises have such large footprints in Wisconsin’s local media markets. The bill’s authors—Representative Jimmy Anderson, Representative Jodi Emerson, and Senator Mark Spreitzer—have given us a good starting point for talking about what public policy can accomplish for journalism, and how far it still has to go in getting its arms around the problem. In Anderson and his colleagues’ defense, it’s a problem that gets uglier and more dire every time some rich nitwit lays off a slew of journalists while blathering about “economic headwinds.”

It’s honestly impressive for lawmakers to show an understanding that journalism is a public good that the market will not provide. And yes, these bills are probably DOA until we get new legislative maps. You can practically hear Robin Vos brewing up a sound bite about Dems engineering a giveaway for the “liberal media.” But there might be a real path forward within a few years.

At the same time, this legislation still has one foot in a for-profit legacy media infrastructure that’s been falling apart for decades and promises to keep failing us. I don’t say that to put the Local Journalism Package under a cloud—we should absolutely get what benefit we can from it. But we should also tackle the problem from other angles entirely. 

Defining “newspapers”

The newspaper subscription tax credit bill, as written, would apply only to newspapers that are qualified to publish legal notices under chapter 985 of the Wisconsin statutes. As you might expect, the way state law defines a newspaper is antiquated. This door policy is meant to prevent bad actors from taking advantage of the tax credit by, say, setting up a “pink slime” news outlet dealing in largely low-quality or partisan slop. It would also shut out newer startup outfits even if they do publish quality journalism. It wouldn’t do anything for people making donations to non-profit outlets like Wisconsin Watch. True, those donations are tax-deductible, but that only makes much difference for donors who fork over a lot of money to charity in a given year. Readers making small donations are just going to take the standard deduction on their tax returns, same as people who’ve made no charitable donations, so in this case the bill’s up-to-$250 tax credit would be meaningful.

I asked the bill’s authors and their staff members about this in particular via email.

“Rep. Anderson is aware that this definition is narrow, but he wanted to make sure that the tax credit would actually go to local newspapers, and couldn’t apply to national digital news sites that just happen to set up subscription services in Wisconsin,” says Rebecca Coyne, a member of Anderson’s legislative staff. “The focus of the tax credit bill is enabling more Wisconsinites to subscribe to local newspapers, rather than supporting any specific companies, though I understand your point about underlying issues with the current landscape of newspaper ownership.”

Chapter 985 deals largely with circulation, how frequently a newspaper is published, how long it’s been published, and things like that. It doesn’t have a whole lot to say about journalistic standards or what resources a newspaper invests in its editorial staff. It does require newspapers to carry “at least 25 percent news content per issue,” which it defines as: “including reports of happenings of recent occurrence of a varied character, such as political, social, moral and religious subjects, designed to inform the general reader.” That helps, but a newspaper could meet that requirement by padding out its pages with national wire stories and syndicated opinion columns. 

Journalists still do valiant and valuable work at Lee and Gannett papers. But now there are fewer and fewer of them, because these companies have laid off thousands of journalists over the years, in the short-sighted pursuit of shareholder return. If people get tax credits for subscribing to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (Gannett) or the Wisconsin State Journal (Lee), that doesn’t necessarily bug me. But let’s be clear that these companies are not going to be forever homes for journalism or journalists. Incentives, tax credits, and even direct subsidies will not necessarily be enough to stave off the next brutal wave of disinvestment. 

We need to safeguard against the very real danger that “save the news” legislation at the state and federal levels will provide taxpayer-funded giveaways for the very legacy media empires dismantling local journalism bit by bit.

To the extent that large, for-profit media conglomerates benefit from this legislation, how can we ensure that their business decisions don’t undermine its intent? That would require sweeping changes in the legal and regulatory landscape, mostly at the federal level. The Local Journalism Package doesn’t really build in anything that would force media companies to maintain or increase their investments in journalism, or would prevent them from carrying out further layoffs and cuts. And to be fair, if these bills did have any teeth in that regard, there is only so much state lawmakers can do on their own to hold corporate media owners to account. 

Of course, not every paper that stands to benefit from this bill is part of a corporate megalith. The bigger question is whether the tax credit would incentivize all that many people to take out newspaper subscriptions. Hopefully a bill like this can at least get more people thinking about the importance of paying for their news. Still, this proposal strikes me as the weakest of the bunch.

Skin in the game

The other two proposals in the Local Journalism Package give the state a bit more flexibility to help out a greater variety of models beyond legacy newspapers. 

“The journalism fellowship program and Civic Information Consortium Board [bills] place no limitations on what kind of media outlets will be supported—they can be digital, radio, TV, traditional print, or another form entirely,” Coyne confirms.

The first would create 25 one-year fellowships for early-career journalists in newsrooms around the state, and provide a $40,000 salary to each. That is honestly pretty  good for an entry-level journalism job, which tells you something about the economics of this industry. This bill puts some real skin in the game by aiming for 25 positions rather than just one or two. Spreading 25 young journalists around the state each year could do all kinds of good across all sorts of different communities and subject areas. A newly created UW System committee would select the fellows and the participating newsrooms and match them up. 

The bill spells out the criteria for selection as follows: “The application shall require each applicant to demonstrate how the applicant’s participation in the program will help increase access to high quality local journalism, bolster media literacy, meet state residents’ civic information needs, or a combination of these.” On its face, that makes plenty of sense—it’s all in how the selection committee defines and applies these concepts. It would be nice to see a requirement for the fellowships to prioritize smaller, non-corporate newsrooms, but at least this creates a context where a variety of publications would have a shot.

The proposed Wisconsin Civic Information Consortium Board would essentially be a nonprofit organization housed in the UW System. This is modeled on a 2018 bill in New Jersey creating that state’s own Civic Information Consortium. So far the grant awards the New Jersey Civic Information Consortium has made seem to hit upon a variety of needs and the grants are mostly pretty sizable, often around $25k or $40k. 

Coyne says the Wisconsin consortium bill “allocates $20 million GPR [general purpose revenue, basically the main pot of funding the state raises from sales and income taxes] in the first year to help get the project off the ground, and $1 million in each subsequent year.” This board would allocate grants to support journalism projects, following criteria similar to that of the fellowship program—information, civic engagement, media literacy, etc. It requires that “at least 30 percent of the total amount of all grants awarded are distributed to off-campus partners in rural communities,” and directs the board to prioritize  “populations and communities in this state that are underserved by local news.” 

Apart from that, the board—consisting of bipartisan political appointees, UW System experts, media representatives, and a “representative from the technology sector”—would have some latitude to define its priorities and funding decisions. So, as with the fellowship, the real test would be in how the Wisconsin CIC went about enacting its legislative mandate. 

Gasp, state-funded media?!

A lot of the discourse around the Local News Package will no doubt center around journalists’ wariness of government funding. Not that other funding and business models keep us entirely clear of political entanglements. I’m reminded of an April 2023 tweet from journalist and professor Steven Thrasher: “Why is ‘state-affiliated’ media something to be so ashamed of, but ‘market-affiliated,’ ‘market-dependent’ or ‘corporate-owned’ media are not?” 

Granted, Thrasher posted this in the context of Elon Musk’s decision to add a “state-affiliated” label to certain media outlets on Twitter and the resulting spat, but the point holds—it’s ridiculous to see the state as politically influential and the market as magically neutral. It’s as if people are bringing certain assumptions to this. Watch out, friend, it might get ideological in there! Yes, we should guard vigilantly against state censorship and political meddling. We must also guard against the pressure market actors try to place on journalists, whether it’s a philanthropist trying to prescribe a project or an advertiser butting into editorial decisions. But the even greater threat to journalism is in our own unexamined assumptions.

Anderson and his co-authors have at least thought about how to safeguard journalism from political interference while providing public funding. The bill creating the grant-funding consortium states, for instance: “The corporation may not award a grant unless the grant recipient enters into a written agreement specifying that the grant recipient is and shall remain independent from the influence of the state, any institution, and any other provider of funds related to the grant.” It also stipulates that none of its board members, including legislators “may vote on any matter related to a grant award under this subsection.” The latter is broadly worded and sounds hard to enforce—Republicans especially are going to keep trying to meddle in the UW System to wildly inappropriate degrees no matter what—but it’s something. Making the intent of the law clear, in its text, counts for a lot. 

Wisconsin should absolutely fund the fellowship program and the Wisconsin CIC, the moment we have a more reasonable legislature. In concert with those efforts, we need a public policy effort to change who owns local media outlets and who has power in this landscape, on a fundamental and structural level. Journalists are already pushing this change. Within legacy media, newsroom unions are organizing with new vigor. Outside of it, journalists are starting their own publications, from solo newsletters to small worker-owned outlets—not because they have bulletproof business plans, but because there is increasingly nowhere else to go if they  want to do this work. If we give people enough time and money to experiment, we could end up with a healthy media landscape that looks very different: A constellation of small, niche outlets insulated as much as possible from market pressures.

State lawmakers could fund grants specifically aimed at these startup efforts, and help the UW System create resources to advise and support journalists launching their own publications around the state. The state could provide similar forms of support for freelance journalists. Throwing out Act 10 and “right-to-work” would also help, as it would give journalists’ unions greater leverage to push back against cuts and ensure that journalists who do get laid off at least have some access to decent severance packages. 

The three bills in the Local Journalism Package could use some fleshing out. A lot of fleshing out, really. Public policy like this has to bridge the ultimately destructive models of “market-affiliated” media and a whole mix of new models that we are not close to fully defining. We can’t expect one bill or even three bills to untangle all that. What we can do is move ahead with a clear understanding of the monumental stakes.