This year, Rebuild Local News and Muck Rack partnered to study the state of local newsrooms around the country. They aimed to gauge the number of journalists remaining in those newsrooms and how those numbers compare to past trends, culminating in the “Local Journalist Index 2025.” Steven Waldman, founder and president of Rebuild Local News, summarized the study in a July 10 commentary: “The new Local Journalism Index report reveals that the shortage of local journalists is more severe and widespread than we had anticipated. … In 2002, there were about 40 journalists per 100,000 residents on average. Today, our study finds there are 8.2 [full-time] Local Journalist Equivalents per 100,000 residents. That’s about a 75% decline in journalists covering communities.”
As other nations pass legislation to compel tech platforms to compensate news media for the content that partially drives their traffic — and use that money to retain journalists — we look to our northern neighbor to learn how they did it, what the U.S. can learn from their example, and to get a status update on federal and state-level efforts still in play.
The case in Canada
Paul Deegan is the president and CEO of News Media Canada. When Deegan spoke with E&P in July about Canada’s Online News Act, he stated that payments to news publishers, as a result of the legislation, had begun to flow to their members.
Deegan spoke about the Act’s origin story: “Four years ago, almost to this day, I spoke with Jamie Irving, who was vice chair of News Media Canada’s board. His family owned most of the newspapers in New Brunswick … He basically said, ‘We want to get Google and Meta to provide fair compensation to publishers.’”
“There were three elements we wanted,” Deegan explained. “First of all, bargaining had to be mandatory. The second was that we needed collective negotiation. Under the Competition Act in Canada, we were essentially unable to come together to negotiate collectively, so we needed an exemption from that. And then the third point was that there had to be some enforcement mechanism, with baseball-style arbitration.”
In the meantime, Google and Meta began cutting licensing deals with Canada’s larger news publishers. However, that actually strengthened the argument for federal legislation, as lawmakers across the political spectrum found it unacceptable that tech platforms were “picking winners and losers” among Canada's news media, according to Deegan.
Initially, the legislation was written in a way that excluded smaller news publishers, but advocates pushed for broader eligibility based on the number of full-time journalists. It also didn’t cap Google’s liability.
“That obviously caused [Google] great concern, and we made a public statement, which basically said that Google’s trying to work in good faith and that the first draft was unreasonable — that Google should have certainty about its obligation. That changed the tenor of where this thing was going,” Deegan said.
Ultimately, Google negotiated with the government and agreed to pay $100 million (CAD) annually to a third-party organization that would distribute the funds based on the established eligibility criteria. The Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission is the “regulatory hammer.”
“You had three constituencies who would get the money,” Deegan explained. You had news publishers — newspapers and digital news sites. You had the public broadcaster, the CBC, and then you’ve got private broadcasters.” News Media Canada argued that two of those segments needed this funding a little less than its members, because the CBC already gets substantial subsidies from taxpayers, and many of the private broadcasters had the security of major telecom company ownership.
“We landed with about 63% of the money from Google,” he said.
“The day [the Online News Act] passed, Meta basically said, ‘We’re out of here.’ Under the legislation, if you don’t pay, you don’t carry news," Deegan said.
“The money is flowing now. It started to flow two or three months ago. At the Canadian Journalism Collective, vetting is still ongoing, but some publishers have received payments. My understanding of how it works is that they’ll get two checks, one for about 60% of what they’re getting in year one, and then a second [and possible third] check for the balance,” Deegan said. He estimates members will receive payments this year of $13,000 to $14,000, though he believes they may be entitled to closer to $18,000.
Across the U.S.A.
At this moment in time, when there’s momentum around the world for legislative solutions, what is the status of federal-level lobbying here in the U.S.? Given the successful efforts in countries like Australia and Canada, what should news media publishers be advocating for here at home? E&P put those questions to Danielle Coffey, president and CEO of the News/Media Alliance.
“We have so many friends in this fight, and this really is a global issue,” she said.
Australia passed the News Media Bargaining Code in 2021.
“Europe is being very aggressive, and Australia went very well. They have the model that seemed to work, and Canada did a great job in doing something similar — working with arbitration as a backstop and having payments to news publishers determined on a per-reporter basis,” Coffey said.
“It’s a significant step in the right direction to receive the revenue we’re owed,” she added.
One of the obstacles that news media publishers face in the U.S. is that the Big Tech companies involved in these actions are often considered “homegrown innovators.” They may have global reach and impact, but these are U.S. companies.
“When you have homegrown innovators, it is going to be particularly difficult to get U.S. lawmakers to regulate them,” she said. “It’s an uphill battle.”
Yet, members of Congress from both sides of the aisle have expressed support for tech regulations and for preserving local news.
“In the case of Google, this administration, in particular, has not been shy in holding them accountable … from a child-safety perspective, regarding sex trafficking and other laws,” Coffey said.
“And the people are interested in seeing tech being held accountable — and not putting the thumb on the scale, deciding what people see and what they don’t see,” she added.
The advent of AI has further strained the relationship between tech and members. Coffey said news media publishers are in defensive mode, fighting for legislation that would offer protections and compensation for news content used to train large language models.
“We’re pushing for our rights. We have litigation pending in courts, and I believe we’re on strong ground,” Coffey said.
There was originally a provision in the “Big Beautiful Bill” that would prevent states from regulating AI for a decade.
“Our allies come together from other content industries, so it’s not just us in the case of AI. We joined forces and helped kill the moratorium with champions like Sen. Marsha Blackburn [R-TN], Sen. Maria Cantwell [D-WA], Sen. Chuck Schumer [D-NY] and Sen. Josh Hawley [R-MO], a bipartisan group,” Coffey noted.
The News/Media Alliance has taken the position that there are both good and bad actors in the AI space.
“We’ve offered collective licenses for our membership to AI companies who are good actors,” she said.
While the lobby for federal remedies unfolds, state-level efforts to pass similar legislation continue. Washington has SB5400 under consideration by the Ways & Means Committee, which would tax tech platforms for utilizing local news content; those funds would be allocated to the Washington Local Journalism Corps Program, a grant organization established by the bill.
Reintroduced in February 2025, the Illinois Journalism Preservation Act (SB 1732) is under debate. Hawaii legislators are considering HB 1458, which would tax social media for advertising revenue derived from news content. In New York, SB 4401, introduced in February 2025, seeks to establish journalism usage fees and related arbitration.
The platforms continue to lobby against these proposals.
According to CalMatters, Google spent upwards of $10.7 million lobbying against Assembly Bill 886 in California.
In Oregon, the Oregon Journalism Protection Act (SB 686) sought to compel the tech platforms to pay out an annual $122 million to news media publishers across the state, or opt for arbitration. But it was voted down in the state senate before the end of the legislative session in June.
“The Oregon Journalism Protection Act would have had a tremendously beneficial impact for Oregon newsrooms,” Coffey said in a follow-up statement to E&P. “Oregon leaders need to step up and get it over the finish line next year, but as we saw at the end of the legislative session, the better a bill is for newsrooms, the harder Big Tech is going to fight it.
“On the other side of things, the agreement that [California Governor] Gavin Newsom made with Google to fund journalism in California has already shown us the fragility of deals not backed by legislation,” Coffey continued. “While it wasn’t perfect, we were thrilled when their deal was announced to get concrete promises to fund our members in California. However, in the last month, both the state of California and Google have already rolled back promises of millions of dollars in funding for local journalism, leaving the California Civic Media Fund with less than half of what was initially pledged. This is why we need legislation to lock in a funding mechanism that keeps local news afloat.”
Gretchen A. Peck is a contributing editor to Editor & Publisher. She's reported for E&P since 2010 and welcomes comments at gretchenapeck@gmail.com.
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