The state government of New York is offering tax credits to local news outlets to help them retain journalists.
The roughly $90 million program will last for three years. A single news organization will be eligible for $320,000 in tax credits annually and can be credited for 50% of the first $50,000 of a journalist’s salary.
The policy – titled the Local Journalism Sustainability Act – was approved by the state legislature in April.
“New York spends more than $8 billion a year on tax incentives and grants to attract and retain businesses in the high-tax state, and advocates of the measure have for years sought to extend the largesse to the newspaper and local TV industry,” reports POLITICO.
Journalists whose local employers claim the new tax credits must live within 50 miles of the community on which they report to qualify. Additionally, the news outlet must have been publishing for at least a year and have libel insurance.
“The U.S. newspaper industry has been in a long decline, driven by factors including a loss in advertising revenue as outlets have moved from primarily print to mostly digital,” notes AP News.
At least $4 million of the cumulative total has been earmarked for incentivization programs to encourage print and broadcast companies to hire new journalists. The remaining $26 million will be equally divided between businesses with fewer than 100 employees and businesses with more than 100 employees.
“I’m elated that our first-in-the-nation Local Journalism Sustainability Act is passing in the state budget,” said state Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal, the bill’s sponsor, in a statement. “A thriving local news industry is vital to the health of our democracy and it’s our responsibility to help ensure New Yorkers have access to independent and community-focused journalism.”
Diane Kennedy, the president of the New York News Publishers Association, celebrated the program’s inclusion in the state’s budget. She said the program will “temporarily offset some of the catastrophic loss of newspaper income to online platforms that control nearly all digital advertising” and will “buy time for newspapers to develop a sustainable source of revenue.”
“Communities without a local newspaper experience higher government spending, lower voter participation and higher levels of civic mistrust,” she wrote in an opinion piece for Syracuse.com. “In the past, a newspaper would derive nearly 85% of its income from print advertising. Thanks largely to the internet, that revenue has dropped 71% since 2000. Digital advertising and subscriptions generate a fraction of that lost income. At the same time that revenue has declined, the cost of newsprint has skyrocketed, increasing by more than 25 percent since 2017.”
Local news outlets can begin taking advantage of the tax credit program when it goes into effect in January of 2025.
