California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday signed AB 2222, the Community Newsroom Employment and Workforce Sustainability Act, or “Community NEWS Act,” into law. AB 2222 creates a journalist employment tax credit model with a straightforward approach: to preserve local journalism, the bill helps publishers afford to employ and retain local journalists. It offers a “news-neutral” mechanism, one that creates refundable employment tax credits for qualifying local news organizations – regardless of size, speech, and structure – that hire and retain journalists across the state.
Newsom praised the value of journalism in the state, specifically praising the Los Angeles Times for an investigative piece on Bell, CA, in which the paper uncovered extensive municipal corruption, including local officials being paid nearly a million dollars a year. “No one would have known had it not been for local journalism,” the governor said, emphasizing the importance of the work that journalists do to uncover waste, fraud, and abuse.
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Background from Rebuild Local News
