Gavin Newsom plans no new state funding for local journalism

from Yue Stella YuCalMatters

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Gov. Gavin Newsom’s budget proposal does not include money for a fund created last year to help the state’s local newsrooms, casting doubt on whether the announced effort to help California journalists will amount to anything and how serious Newsom is about supporting the struggling industry.

That’s a significant departure from the August 2024 agreement between state leaders and Google, in which they agreed to jointly spend $175 million over five years to fund local journalism.

The deal that Newsom welcomed as “a major breakthrough in ensuring the survival of edits” at the time was achieved after Google spent a record amount — $11 million — Successfully lobbied state lawmakers to reject two proposals that would have forced Google to pay newsrooms to use their content. Under the agreement, the state will pay $70 million and Google will pay $55 million into the newly created California Citizen Media Fund for local news outlets. Google will also continue to issue its $10 million annual editorial grants.

But in May 2025, citing budget constraints, Newsom reduced the state’s first-year commitment to just $10 million for the 2025-26 fiscal year, with no state funding guaranteed. Google subsequently said it would match the state’s $10 million investment, but no more.

Google was clear in the deal that “its contributions are contingent” on government funding, similar to the deal funding journalism in Canada, said Assemblymember spokeswoman Erin Ivey Buffy WeeksOakland Democrat who brokered the 2024 deal.

A 2019 study by the trade group News Media Alliance calculated this Google made $4.7 billion from news sites in 2018. Google’s parent company, Alphabet, made over $100 billion in the third quarter of 2025 alone — its “first $100 billion quarter,” Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai said. As of Wednesday, Alphabet’s market capitalization was over $4 trillion.

None of the promised $20 million has reached local news outlets, much to the dismay of journalism advocates.

“At this point right now, nobody should be jumping up and down and getting excited,” said California News Publishers Association President Chuck Champion.

The lack of Newsom’s proposed funding for the coming years angered Champion, who said the governor has not followed through on his promise.

“He cares more about the billionaires and his friends than the journalists who are on the street,” Champion said. “He talks about democracy, talks about how critically important it is, and then lets our journalists starve on the vine.”

The lack of a future commitment from the state also raises the question of whether Google will deposit anything into the fund next year. The Google News Initiative did not immediately respond to CalMatters’ request for comment.

Newsom’s office did not respond to questions about his decision to skip the funding this year, referring CalMatters to the state Department of Finance and the California Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development, which administers the funds.

The deputy promises to fight for more funds

“There is no going back on the deal,” Treasury Director Joe Stevenshaw stressed to reporters during a budget briefing last week, saying the state had already contributed $10 million pledged last year.

Weeks said budget constraints forced Newsom’s hand last year.

“What you saw last year was the budget as it was,” she said. “Programs all over the place have been cut and chopped, either completely reset or significantly scaled back, and this is no different.”

But she said she would fight for more funding.

“I was operating under the assumption that (the state) would honor the multi-year commitment,” Weeks said.

But even the full amount of the Google deal may not be enough to “stop the collapse of independent public news in California,” said former state Sen. Steve Glazer, an Orinda Democrat who authored a bill that would tax credits offered to employers of journalists by charging a fee to platforms such as Google.

“Leaders cannot just talk about protecting our democracy,” he said. “They must act to direct resources to support independent news reporting that provides oversight and accountability to our democratic institutions.”

The journalism industry across the country is in decline. Between 2005 and 2024, more than 3,200 newspapers closed their doors, according to a 2024 report from the Local News Initiative at Northwestern University.

As of this year, California has 1.5 news outlets for every 100,000 residents, ranking 45th among all 50 states and Washington. Between 2013 and 2024, the number of newspaper journalists in California fell by more than half.

To make matters worse, last year Congress voted to strip public radio stations across the country of federal funding, putting dozens of stations in California in danger. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a national nonprofit that has funded public media since 1967, announced its dissolution due to funding cuts last week.

California public broadcasters could lose up to $30 million a year due to federal cuts, lawmaker says Chris WardDemocrat from San Diego, in a letter last month to legislative budget leaders requesting state funding for public media.

Ward, along with 11 other Democratic Assembly members, is asking for $70 million next year for public radio stations.

“California is one of only 16 states that does not provide funding for public media,” he said in the letter. “California’s 33 nonprofit public media organizations provide coverage to over 90 percent of the state and serve diverse communities in both (the largest) metropolitan areas and rural communities—services that include not only arts, culture and community engagement, but also emergency alerts and education.”

CalMatters CEO Neil Chase has been involved in the 2024 deal as a board member of Local Independent Online News Publishers. His views do not necessarily reflect those of the organization, its editorial staff or its staff.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.