To Save Local News, New York Can’t Exclude Nonprofits
We are nonprofit digital news publications around New York State. Our focus is covering state and local affairs. Some of us cover large metropolitan areas, other small communities.
Two years ago, the state Legislature and governor created the Newspaper and Broadcast Media Jobs Program to support local news publications in an effort to shore up their finances. We applaud that support, given the financial and political challenges the industry faces and the consequences to a democratic society of a diminished press.
As nonprofits, we were not eligible for that benefit. We are seeking an equitable and comprehensive application of that program to include nonprofit journalism in New York covering local news. We’re calling on state lawmakers to support a bill, sponsored by Senator Jamaal Bailey and Assemblymember Jeffrey Dinowitz, extending the same support to nonprofits as commercial outlets receive. And we’re calling on Governor Kathy Hochul to include the program in the state budget currently under consideration.
The legislation would support not only digital news outlets, but public television and radio broadcasters and public access stations. We’re all locally controlled and focused on providing the type of in-depth and community-centered coverage that is increasingly hard to find in New York.
Digital nonprofit news outlets have emerged as a vital part of the country’s media ecosystem. Today, more than 500 nonprofits publish around the country, including some 60 in New York state, including about 20 focused on local and state affairs. Most of us operate in communities where newspapers and television newsrooms have been downsizing, reducing their coverage in the process. We’re working to fill the gap.
Our work is vital to our communities. In recent months, nonprofit outlets have broken national news on the death of a Rohingya refugee in Buffalo after U.S. Border Patrol left him on the street on a frigid night. We’ve produced service journalism on how to access SNAP benefits under new work requirements in multiple languages. And we’ve covered local stories that bind our neighbors together, like coverage of a town board in the Hudson Valley to seize a working people’s boat club through eminent domain at a cost of $300,000 to taxpayers.
In addition to promoting an informed citizenry and democracy, establishing a grant program would promote economic development across the state. Nonprofit outlets employ some 200 people, and we all have room to grow. Additionally, wide swaths of the state, particularly in the Southern Tier, Mohawk Valley, and the Capital Region lack a digital outlet and are candidates to add one. State grants would encourage such growth.
Importantly, just as in the program for commercial outlets, the government wouldn’t be able to pick and choose which publications get support, and good governmentgroups like Reinvent Albany, Citizens Union, and Common Cause New York have supported the program. We urge Albany to take this opportunity to invest in a critical pillar of our communities and our democracy.
Signed,
Adirondack Explorer
Central Current
City Limits
Documented
Hudson Valley Pilot
Investigative Post
Ithaca Times
New Pine Plains Herald
New York Focus
NY Jewish Week
Peekskill Herald
Pelham Examiner
Rochester Beacon
THE CITY
The Daily Catch
The Highlandscurrent.org
The Ithaca Voice
The Overlook
The Recorder
The Recorder (Bedford)
The Yonkers Ledger
