As the world becomes digital, people are quickly putting down their Sunday newspapers and picking up their smartphones to get the news. As digital platforms become more valuable than print newspapers and advertisers follow suit, California news outlets are desperate to find ways to stay profitable and relevant.
Supporters – including the California News Publishers Association. The Western Media Association, which represents Los Angeles Times journalists, believes Assembly Bill 886 will give the industry a much-needed boost by requiring online platforms like Google to pay news outlets when they link to their content. News outlets must spend at least 70% of their funds on their staff.
The second bill being considered by California lawmakers is Senate Bill 1327, which would charge Amazon, Meta and Google a “data extraction mitigation fee” for data collected from users. The funds will be used to support local newsrooms.
California has lost a third of its newspapers since 2005, according to a 2023 report from the Northwest Medill School of Journalism. Since then, the number of journalists in the state has dropped by 68%, and news outlets have struggled to attract readers and subscribers despite efforts to shift to digital media.
The Los Angeles Times cut more than 20% of its newsroom in January, one of the largest layoffs in the paper’s 142-year history. Since Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong sold the San Diego Union-Tribune to a hedge fund in July 2023, the newspaper’s staff has been cut by about 30%. LAist also faces “significant budget shortfalls” over the next two years and is offering voluntary buyouts to journalists ahead of a possible round of layoffs.
Americans began to get news through social media because it was convenient and fast. According to the Reuters Institute for Journalism’s 2024 Digital News Report, the proportion of Americans using social media to get news will increase from 27% in 2013 to 48% in 2024.
But concerns about unreliable sources and misinformation have been growing. A 2023 Pew Research Center survey showed that 4 in 10 Americans who get news from social media said they dislike such inaccurate information, compared with 3 in 10 in 2018. After the 2016 presidential election, about a quarter of Americans said they had knowingly or unknowingly shared a fabricated news story.
As conspiracies and misinformation spread and fuel polarization, there are fewer local newsrooms dedicated to holding officials accountable and keeping community members fully informed.
As both bills make their way through the state Legislature, here’s what you need to know about California’s shrinking journalism industry and the changing media advertising scene.
Sunday circulation for some of California’s largest newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, Orange County Register and San Diego Union-Tribune, has fallen by at least 30% since 2015. Daily newspapers have seen the largest decline in circulation, down 79% in just eight years. In 2015, its average daily number of papers was 110,400. By 2023, its average daily number of papers plummeted to 23,000.
“There’s no question this is a brutal time for journalists,” said Gabriel Kahn, professor of the practice of journalism at the University of Southern California. “Jobs are being lost and local coverage is disappearing. “
The San Francisco Bay Area saw its largest decline in journalism employment per 1,000 jobs since 2009, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In 2009, one in 1,000 employed people worked as a journalist. By 2023, only half of these jobs will remain.
Although the number of journalists in the Bay Area fell sharply in the early 2010s, journalism employment has been slowly recovering since 2015.
Kahn said the number of reporters in the Bay Area depends on the national influence of Silicon Valley, which has continued to make headlines in recent years on topics including social media, artificial intelligence and tech figures like Elon Musk.
“Coverage on high-profile topics, whether it’s celebrities in Los Angeles, tech or politics… can gain a national audience, so there’s always a need to produce that kind of news content,” he said. “Silicon Valley has always had a way of growing, and with that As they develop, journalists will join in to report on the surge.”
Journalistic efforts continue to be concentrated in metropolitan centers such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Sacramento, and San Jose. The number of reporters in Los Angeles and Orange County has increased by 34% over the past decade, while the number of reporters in San Jose and San Diego has remained essentially the same.
However, the number of journalists in the state capital has plummeted by 57% over the past decade. Total journalism employment in the Sacramento region has seen its largest decline since 2013.
McClatchy, publisher of The Sacramento Bee and dozens of other news outlets across the country, filed for bankruptcy in 2020 and was acquired by a New Jersey hedge fund later that year. Kahn said the station is also consolidating news coverage in Sacramento by reducing expenses.
“The fact is, this is still the place where a $300 billion budget was approved [and] a lot of business [gets] Deal done,” he said. “I’m surprised there aren’t more [coverage]”.
Kahn said many California news outlets that cling to old business models are seeing money drain away as social media and search engines dominate the advertising business that once fueled journalism.
Since 2018, national digital ad spending in California has increased by 54%, while print media ad spending has decreased by 27%, according to Borrell Associates.
For California registered voters, the most popular social media for election-related news is YouTube, followed by Facebook, Instagram, X and TikTok. News outlets continue to lose several readers as more Americans experience news fatigue and turn to social media for news and comedic relief.
Since January 2021, the top 10 California news sites, including latimes.com, sfchronicle.com and ocregister.com, have seen total unique visitors decline by at least 35%.
The OC Register’s website had one of the largest declines over the past three years, at 72%.
Kahn attributes some of the digital readership losses to the difficulty of optimizing news content for search engines.
“One of the major dilemmas facing the news industry is that their audiences are dependent on the Silicon Valley giants and their algorithms,” Kahn said.
A UC Berkeley Institute of Government poll conducted from May 29 to June 4 found that California registered voters relied on Google and other search engines nearly as much as newspapers and magazines for information about the election. News on related issues.
Digital advertising has become a mainstay of Google parent company Alphabet, with revenue nearly quadrupling in the past decade. Google advertising (including Google search, YouTube advertising and other networks) revenue in 2023 will reach an unprecedented $237.8 billion.
The U.S. Department of Justice and eight states, including California, filed a landmark antitrust lawsuit against Google in 2023, accusing it of abusing its power to monopolize the digital advertising market.
“Any funds falling into these [journalism] “Agencies are going to be positive because they’ve basically been watching the water drain out of the bathtub for the last fifteen years,” Kahn said.
