Assembly overwhelmingly supports California Journalism Preservation Act

Media Guild of the West President Matt Pearce sent the following bulletin to Guild members on June 1, 2023:

Colleagues,

I just wanted to share some fantastic news: The California Journalism Preservation Act (AB 886, Wicks), just passed out of the California Assembly with a bipartisan 46 to 6 vote. The bill now heads to the state Senate. 

Moments ago, leaders from both parties, led by sponsor Asm. Buffy Wicks, gave impassioned speeches on the Assembly floor about the importance of local journalism and, specifically, about the importance of paying local journalists, like us, who put in the work every day.

Media Guild of the West members unanimously endorsed this bill at our April quarterly membership meeting. The CJPA would create an arbitration mechanism that would require ultramassive tech companies like Google and Meta, which dominate the digital advertising market, to pay news publishers a fair price for digitally scraping and profiting from our journalism. 

Our Guild, along with our sibling NewsGuild local Pacific Media Workers Guild in Northern California, successfully pressed Asm. Wicks and the newspaper coalition sponsoring the bill to add amendments to make sure that at least 70% of platform funds go toward newsroom payroll. In exchange for receiving these funds, newsroom leaders additionally have to disclose to us how they're spending the money and whether they're hiring more journalists.

But yesterday, Meta, in an effort to kill the bill, threatened to ban all journalism from Facebook and Instagram in California if the bill becomes law. This brazen intimidation tactic, which Meta has trotted out elsewhere to little success, immediately backfired. 

Our affiliates at the California Labor Federation were so outraged that they added their support for the bill right before the vote this morning. Assembly leaders were also clearly unmoved.

The bill now heads to the Senate, where it likely faces a steeper climb. A variety of groups and small publishers have raised concerns about the bill's mechanisms, so amendments are likely still expected. We will keep monitoring the bill and reaching out to our journalism community partners to make sure that this bill actually supports newsrooms, as it should.

Thank you to all of you who supported this bill at our April membership meeting -- I can confidently say that none of this would have happened without you.

In solidarity,

Matt Pearce
President, Media Guild of the West
The NewsGuild-CWA Local 39213