The Legislature and Oregon’s local news support: First rule, do no harm

About 175 years ago, gold miners began damaging the pristine environments of Oregon and California in their quest for the shiny metal. And if we had known what they were doing, we might have taxed them somehow. Now, in our time, the big tech platforms mine our personal data, building massively profitable companies. Let’s get them to pay out a bunch of money for one of the collateral damage they’re doing. That’s the tortured historical analogy that played out over more than a year in the California legislature over the past couple of years.

And now, that, in essence, is the argument behind Oregon’s SB 686, authored by State Sen. Khanh Pham, and dubbed, in an appealing if unintentionally Orwellian fashion, the Oregon Journalism Protection Act. In fact, it would afford too much protection for the hedge-fund driven chains that have eviscerated so much of Oregon’s local news companies. It is one of several efforts, both nationally and in several states, to force Google and Meta/Facebook to pay news publishers. It is a largely well-meaning initiative, put together by Democrats who see and are distressed by the local news vacuums that grow year by year in their own districts. And it offers a great Robin Hood, take-from-the-rich and give-to-the-poor meme. 

Take from the platforms that have swooped up much of the advertising revenue that once went to hugely profitable newspapers – semi-monopolies themselves, in many places – and give it to publishers to pay more journalists to report the news, all without any court adjudication. Mind you, this isn’t a tax; it is the state government saying to one group it must pay another group for what it has legally done. A dubious use of power.

Get below the surface and you see the silliness of the argument, which makes no sense in terms of public policy. Should Edison and the electrifiers have paid compensation to the coal and oil lamp companies? Should the early automakers have helped out the horse-and-buggy proprietors?

There are two big reasons that I, a news publisher, oppose the bill, as written.  And why I point to almost a half dozen meaningful actions that the Legislature could take that would have immediate positive impact for those driven by their missions to provide local news to Oregonians. 

As with any legislation, the first rule here should be: Do not harm. This bill violates that precept, and in so doing could slow the growth of Lookout Eugene-Springfield.

We already know that Meta/Facebook will prohibit all news links within Oregon if the bill is signed into law, and Google has threatened to do the same. News publications depend on Facebook for between 15% and 25% of their traffic, and new news companies like Lookout use social media to quickly build awareness of what we offer the community. Sadly, these aren’t the old newspaper days when publishers had a direct on-the-driveway connection to their readers; today, only a third of readers come directly to news sites with Google and Facebook providing most of the rest of the audience. 

The net result then of any such law would then be an immediate loss of traffic to news sites, while any hope of payment would wait until the courts settled the Constitutionality of the legislation. This isn’t hypothetical. It has happened because of quite-similar national legislation in Canada, where Facebook has pulled out – and publishers two years after legislative action haven’t yet received a dime. (In California, 15 months of 2023-2024 wrangling produced a “settlement” with Google, but not Facebook, and still not a dollar has gone to publishers.) 

At the same time, as I have disclosed publicly, Lookout has received financial support from the Google News initiative (GNI) to build Lookout Santa Cruz’s Lookout in the Classroom and other programs. While some may point to a supposed conflict of interest, my opposition to such legislation is both long-standing, pre-dating any GNI support, and realistic. Much better to have meaningful investment from a platform that has funded hundreds of millions of dollars of news projects than a legislative decision that may well produce more negatives than positives.

New news companies don’t need more near-term pressure on our businesses, hardly offset by  hopes of possible gain down the road.

Secondly, too much of the money would go not to the remaining independent Oregon publishers but to the hedge fund owners of Oregon’s newspapers – a group that has appreciably grown just in the last year, witness a great OPB analysis. In the past year alone, Mississippi-based hedge fund Carpenter Media, has acquired 38 of the 88 newspaper titles in the state, and has quickly and deeply cut into already-thin staffing. Yes, OPB and the Oregonian would benefit from the potential funding here – but so would those who have eviscerated local journalism throughout the state. Carpenter, Gannett (owner of the Register-Guard), Lee Enterprises and even the most slanted provider of local TV news, Sinclair Broadcast Group (owner of KVAL), infamous for forcing far right editorials to be run locally) all would take in money because national broadcast chains, too, would get a piece of this promised pie.

I applaud lawmakers’ efforts to support the hiring of more journalists, and as a new Oregon publisher, love the idea. Our community-financed April 10 launch of Lookout has gotten out of the gate so quickly, with off-the-charts membership and advertising growth – and lots of early reading and sharing. We already will host one of the largest local newsrooms in the state, 15 in total. As we build it and grow it, we’d love to have state support, in any way that doesn’t compromise our “without fear or favor” journalism. As a digital disruptor in local news, more than 70% of our expenses are in paying people, mainly journalists. We’d like to pay more of them sooner than later. 

I summed up my problems with SB 686 in my three-minute testimony April 11 before the Senate Rules Committee, which may soon vote on advancing the legislation.

Let me be clear that within the bill is a good idea, the establishment of a Civic Information Consortium (CIC), to be run by the University of Oregon, to aid the many struggling publishers in the state. The CIC could build on the good efforts of the FORJ group, which supports Oregon rural journalism. But that’s insufficient reason to support the bill as a whole. 

What could the Legislature do now to help speed local news replacement in Oregon? 

In my testimony, I laid out five programs that the Legislature could consider – all of which are under consideration in multiple states, all well-tracked and advocated by Rebuild Local News. None of them – tax credits for local news subscribers and advertisers, tax credits for hiring and retaining journalists, state ad set-asides and a Fellows program to hire young journalists – would be held up by court action. None would cause a loss in platform traffic to news websites. Each can make a difference today. 

The Legislature needs to focus on those ideas if it really wants to make a difference – and make sure it is not further damaging a fragile news environment in Oregon.

Ken Doctor is the founder and CEO of Lookout Local, Inc, a public benefit company that is the parent of both Lookout Eugene-Springfield and Lookout Santa Cruz