Sitting on Governor Newsom’s desk is AB 2222, the Community Newsroom Employment and Workforce Sustainability Act (Community NEWS Act). The bill seeks to put California at the forefront of national efforts to keep local newsrooms intact.
The Governor has until September 30 to sign the legislation or veto it.
Authored by Assemblymember Chris Ward and co-authored by Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, AB 2222 would provide refundable tax credits to local newsrooms for each journalist they employ. Those credits would help ensure baseline workforce stability especially critical for smaller news outlets facing financial headwinds.
For California, with the nation’s largest immigrant population and highest concentration of Limited English Proficient (LEP) households, the bill would help sustain ethnic media outlets that serve as an essential bridge, providing crucial services ranging from translations of emergency evacuation orders to helping dispel dangerous mis- and dis-information or covering local school board meetings.
Under the bill, community-rooted newsrooms would receive credits of $20,000 for the first five full-time editorial positions (at least 30 hours per week, with annualized compensation of $35,000 or more).
Each additional full-time journalist would receive a credit of $15,000, plus an additional $15,000 incentive for each newly created reporting position, while each part-time journalist would receive $7,500.
Eligibility extends broadly to print, broadcast, digital, nonprofit, and independent family-owned news outlets.
An unprecedented coalition
The bill garnered overwhelming support in the state legislature, passing the Senate 30–10 on August 30 and the Assembly 59–15 on August 31.
That legislative mandate is backed by an unprecedented coalition across the state and nation: 134 news organizations and press associations have jointly delivered a letter urging Governor Newsom to sign AB 2222, including 94 California-based outlets, regional publishers, and labor guilds, joined by 40 national media associations.
Fiscal Responsibility, ROI
If passed, the credits will not take effect until tax year 2027, protecting current state reserves and allowing multi-year budget planning. The bill also mandates annual Franchise Tax Board compliance reports beginning in 2029 and automatically sunsets after five years (taxable years 2027 through 2031).
Additionally, the credits are offset by federal tax limits that cap corporate deductions for executive compensation over $1 million, curbing excessive corporate write-offs.
The return on investment, meanwhile, is substantial.
Peer-reviewed research in the Journal of Financial Economics found that when a local newspaper closes, municipal bond borrowing costs rise by 5 to 11 basis points—adding an estimated $650,000 in excess interest on a typical bond issue for local schools, water systems, and infrastructure.
But the bill’s value goes well beyond basis points and bond ratings.
When community and ethnic media survive, frontline community organizations and state agencies maintain the trusted communications pipeline required to deliver essentials like public health directives, farmworker protections, and disaster relief.
An information lifeline
During the 2017 Tubbs Fire, official English-language alerts left critical gaps that put non-English speakers in immediate danger.
KBBF 89.1 FM, the nation’s first bilingual public radio station, stepped in with broadcasting around the clock in Spanish, debunking false rumors that federal immigration agents were stationed at evacuation shelters or that an undocumented resident had caused the fire.
Two years later, the 2019 Kincade Fire tested that same lifeline again. The station expanded its Indigenous language broadcasts to include Mixteco and Triqui, common among regional farmworkers.
In both instances, KBBF relied on volunteers as it lacked the revenue to sustain full-time reporting staff.
Further south along the San Diego border, Indian Voices spent years reporting on and partnering with tribal leaders to raise public awareness around the toxic Tijuana River sewage crisis, which has long impacted coastal neighborhoods and Kumeyaay ancestral lands.
In Monterey Park, following the 2023 Lunar New Year mass shooting that took 11 lives, Chinese- and Vietnamese-language journalists worked through the night to pierce an information vacuum.
With elderly Cantonese- and Mandarin-speaking residents receiving no official in-language updates in the first critical hours, local reporters translated police briefings on the fly, dispelled viral rumors, and connected grieving families with victim assistance and mental health care they otherwise would never have found.
Trusted messengers
The COVID-19 pandemic exposed a different kind of information gap.
In an October 2020 statewide poll, only 29% of Black Californians said they would definitely or probably get a COVID-19 vaccine once available — far below the 70% of Asian Americans, 62% of white residents, and 54% of Latinos who said the same.
This gap was rooted in generations of justified distrust from medical racism, including the Tuskegee experiments that researchers say still shape vaccine hesitancy today.
Generic public health messaging could not close that gap on its own. Independent Black media addressed the history behind the hesitancy instead of dismissing it, and connected residents to vaccination resources through messengers their own communities actually trusted.
Governor Newsom has visited these places. He has consoled grieving families, met local community leaders, and spoken with Brandon Tsay, the 26-year-old hero who disarmed the Monterey Park gunman.
The governor saw firsthand that local community journalists are often the only trusted messengers capable of connecting vulnerable populations to life-saving state resources.
A historic opportunity
Recognizing that local journalism is essential civic infrastructure, Newsom has since 2024 demonstrated national leadership by launching the public-private California Civic Media Program and supporting the Propel Initiative. (ACoM is a Propel partner.)
Both programs help secure vital investments to sustain the UC Berkeley California Local News Fellowship and build newsroom capacity for organizations including our own, as well as the Maynard Institute, California Black Media, and the Latino Media Collaborative.
Yet these short-term grant dollars cannot permanently sustain a newsroom’s daily payroll. Without baseline workforce stability, community newsrooms are unable to retain the fellows and reporters the state has helped train.
AB 2222 helps close this gap.
We respectfully urge Governor Newsom to stand with the legislative majority, the 134 media organizations, and the working reporters and sign AB 2222 before September 30.
JULIAN DO
Julian Do is co-director at ACoM, where he focuses on media industry advocacy, local news capacity building, sustainability opportunities, and special campaigns including inter-ethnic relations, COVID-19 pandemic misinformation, and journalism awards events.