One-third of California’s newsrooms have fully shut since 2005. As trust in national media crumbles, a modest proposal could determine whether the rest survive.
That includes hundreds of multicultural community news outlets — once called ethnic media before the Trump administration made “ethnic” a trigger word — with which my nonprofit organization has worked for decades to meet the information needs of immigrants and communities of color.
Amid an ever-polarized country, the need to access accurate information fast has never been more urgent.
Nationwide, newsroom employment dropped 65 percent between 2005 and 2020, and the US has lost over 2,500 newspapers since 2005.
Over the same period, our community news sector incurred a loss of over 50 percent, down to about 250 outlets in California today, many of which are their communities’ only surviving newsrooms with the impossible responsibility of covering the entire state.
The American Community Media (ACoM) — with the California Local News Fellowship, the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, California Black Media, and Latino Media Collaborative — joins the California Propel Local News Initiative with advisory from former senator Steven Glazer to solve this worsening crisis by rebuilding California’s shrinking local news infrastructure with a $15 million annual allocation for the 2025-2026 state budget, now pending approval by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
The ask is less than 0.005 percent of the overall $320 billion state budget, equal to spending half a penny to protect a $100 bill.
Meanwhile, voters’ return on investment is immediate: The measure would prevent the closure of already-struggling newsrooms serving news deserts, ensuring that Californians don’t lose access to vital, accurate local information, including public service cuts and urgent civil rights issues.
Participating newsrooms would serve as catalysts to fact-based, grassroots reporting industry-wide, meeting the public’s demand for the news they want on the digital platforms they prefer.
Consider these figures: While public trust in national media has plummeted to 32 percent in 2023, trust in local news organizations has surged to 74 percent in 2024.
From 2013 to 2025, US media trends also show a growing reliance on social media platforms, which 54 percent of adults now use for news and information — surpassing traditional TV (50 percent) and online news websites and apps (48 percent).
As this preference for social media grows, so does the prevalence of paid-per-click misinformation on these platforms. The failure of California’s underfunded news infrastructure to provide its nearly 40 million residents with accurate information from sources and channels they trust would only further jeopardize our democratic system.
To prevent this, CPLNI proposes a two-pronged strategy.
The measure would support the UC Berkeley-based California Local News Fellowship which, since its launch in 2023, has already placed 75 trained mid-career journalism fellows in highly trusted newsrooms, including ACoM and other multicultural media outlets, statewide to bridge growing gaps in local news coverage.
The CPLNI would also fund the California Propel Initiative, which equips local nonprofit, for-profit and ethnic or community newsrooms — especially those with the widest underserved audiences — with the skills, tools, and resources to deliver factual, engaging information on widely used social media and online platforms.
In late May, both state Senate and Assembly hearings brought dozens of California’s top news champions to Sacramento to testify for and support the CPLNI, including former Los Angeles Times and Associated Press journalist Sen. Catherine Blakespear, D-Encinitas, and media transparency advocate Assemblymember Marc Berman, D-Menlo Park.
ACoM and our many media partners also drove hundreds of miles to give our own testimonies and join a letter campaign to legislators.
As any community leader or elected official knows, responding to a crisis when survival is at stake is nearly or actually impossible without an injection of vital resources; in this case the ask is miniscule, while the benefits would help give Californians the news they need for generations.
For these reasons, I’m writing on behalf of the over 300 California community media outlets we work with to urge California legislators to continue supporting the California Propel Local News Initiative, including the California Local News Fellowship Program at UC Berkeley.
We also urge Governor Newsom to approve the $15 million request for the 2025-2026 California Budget, as less than a week remains before his approval deadline.
