Seeking an urgent lifeline, the NewsGuild and its President Jon Schleuss are lobbying federal lawmakers for short- and long-term measures designed to shore up and then sustain journalism with public aid. It’s an unusual role for a labor movement in an industry more comfortable holding the government accountable than seeking government’s help.
Schleuss and the guild have been focused recently on how and when journalists should return to their newsrooms, but how and when aren’t the only safety and security issues if the number of newsrooms keeps shrinking.
Schleuss argues the federal government has played a role in bringing independent news to the public since the nation’s founders gave publishers preferred postal rates to distribute newspapers.
“The only way I think that you can long-term replant these news deserts is by public support in a lot of these communities, because the economics don’t work out,” Schleuss said in an interview.
“Short term keeps people from being let go, keeps people on the job, keeps people reporting during this pandemic,” he said. “But long term I think that this pandemic is accelerating the fact that ad supported news is hard, if not impossible, at the local level. So, we have to find a way to do it. Treat it more like our infrastructure, our intellectual infrastructure.”
Indeed, while news consumption during the COVID-19 outbreaks has spiked dramatically, advertising revenue has fallen precipitously, with direct newsroom consequences. The pandemic, according to The New York Times, has been responsible for furloughs, pay cuts or layoffs affecting more than 36,000 media workers.
With its #SaveTheNews campaign, the NewsGuild is pushing Congress for direct grants to local newspapers and local online news platforms, a plan that has not gained traction among lawmakers. More popular is another plan by the guild and others in the industry to let larger news organizations apply for Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans. Under that proposed plan, which has bipartisan support in the Senate, large news organizations, such as Gannett and McClatchy, would be able to obtain PPP loans for their individual newspapers.
Right now, only news organizations with up to 1,000 employees can obtain the PPP money, thus excluding chains and large television companies.
Long term, the guild is proposing changes in the tax code that would allow newspapers to operate as nonprofit corporations and make it easier for employee cooperatives to operate news outlets. The union also favors public financing of local newspapers, much like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting uses taxpayer money to help support local public television and local public radio stations.
To go back to work, there needs to be a place to work in the first place. Can you talk about some of the congressional measures you are working on to help news organizations in the short term?
Schleuss: Our first priority … would be direct grants to workers. The federal government would provide funding relief exclusively to subsidize employees at local print and online news outlets. There would be a condition, a string attached, so that if the company received any of those funds, [the funds] …would have to go to wages and salaries. And [the organizations] they couldn’t do cuts during that period. They’d have to rescind any of the cuts they currently have made. That would be the cleanest thing, and that’s what we’re pushing for. But it doesn’t have a lot of widespread support right now.
That sort of ties into the second thing that we’re pushing, which we have seen bipartisan support both in the Senate and in the House on, which is an expansion of the Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program (currently limited to news organizations with no more than 1,000 employees). That would allow newspaper chains, local TV and radio , to be able to apply for loans that turn into grants, specifically based on location. So a chain like Gannett, which has 20,000 employees, would be able to apply for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, apply for South Bend, apply for Palm Beach — apply for all these different publications — so that the money would go directly to support keeping people fully employed at those organizations. …
The third, if neither of those things fly, is an expansion of [government] advertising to local newspapers for publications that have lost revenue. This one definitely needs strings attached … it would have to be devoted to wages, ending furloughs. They would have to keep people on staff.
Let’s talk about some of the longer- term proposals that you’ve been talking about. Tell me what some of those plans are.
Schleuss: It would be preferable to change the tax code to make it easier for news publications to qualify for 501(c)(3) status. We’re pushing an effort locally in Baltimore to have the Baltimore Sun be bought by a group of nonprofits and turned into a nonprofit. … The main key is you have to have a sustainable operation. But when you eliminate the need to pay for shareholders and dividends, you can keep some of that money and reinvest it.
The other proposal which you’re seeing a bit more support for recently … is how do we actually set up an apparatus to publicly support [news organizations]. The only way I think that you can long-term replant these news deserts is by public support in a lot of these communities, because the economics don’t work out. …
I like the idea of a corporation for public media. We already have publicly financed journalism in this country, but you have to have a TV or radio license.
When you need inspiration on the question of should the federal government subsidize the Fourth Estate, just look at the postal rates at the start of the country. The founding fathers saw the postal service as a way to distribute news periodicals at either no cost to the publishers or relatively little cost.
You’re a journalist. Is it a strange place to be, lobbying the government? How do you create the independence that journalists need to be proper watchdogs and hold people accountable?
Schleuss: I was just looking at this thread on Twitter about how other social journalists felt that if we had more journalists, we’d be better at self-policing ourselves. We’d have reporters fact-checking each other. We’d have other reporters writing about other reports in the news.
For me, it is an extremely strange place to be lobbying members of Congress for support of our industry. I didn’t expect to be doing this. It’s also essential that we do it because our democracy only lives if we have transparency. We’re only going to get that by having a very vibrant free press, and not just in New York and D.C., but also in Casper, Wyoming.
It’s fascinating. How do you navigate this, because you just have to hold people accountable. It’s the same way, you know, if we’re taking ad dollars from Halliburton you still have to report on Halliburton, right?