Good morning and welcome to the LA Times politics newsletter. I’m Shelby Grad, deputy news editor, filling in for David Lauter today.
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A Matter of Life and Death for California’s Newspapers
Jerry Brown was always ahead of the curve in predicting California’s future.
But one insight seems especially worth considering this week, when the forces of technology and commerce are squeezing California’s vital institutions like never before.
As governor, Brown urged the University of California Board of Regents to embrace cutting-edge technology in transforming education, citing the newspaper industry as a lesson.
Brown “walked around the newsrooms of his once-mighty California newspaper empire…row after row of empty desks,” Miriam Powell writes in The Browns of California.
Jerry Brown saw the newspaper industry as a lesson.
(Thomas Ovalle)
That was more than a decade ago, and Brown would likely not recognize much of the newsroom if he visited today. It’s closed. Others make a tough distinction “Ghost Newspaper”. Many people have experienced Twist cut, moreover Probably on the way.
The work of journalism is Democracy are under threat, Corruption bubble Local governments and society are facing huge divisions, but the number of people on the ground seems to decrease with each passing week.
This summer is shaping up to be a pivotal moment for what remains of the newspaper industry — a matter of life and death as publishers face off against the powerful forces that big tech companies have spent decades building.
The cursor moves to the Google search engine.
(Don Ryan/Associated Press)
The problem is that:
The Arrival of AI
Artificial intelligence has long been considered a serious but vague threat to the workhorse of journalism: news and articles that computers might eventually be able to spit out faster and cheaper. Now we’re seeing it in action: Google has announced changes to its search that will offer options inspired by artificial intelligence.
The publishing industry is already sounding the alarm, saying the new approach will summarize journalists’ work without directing users to their websites (meaning news outlets will lose traffic and advertising revenue).
It’s not yet clear exactly how it will work. But I tried searching with Google’s Gemini AI search tool, and it’s clear that there are fewer links to journalism websites and more information to stay on Google’s platform. News organizations are using terms like: “genocide” and ‘Devastating’ To explain the change, Large losses are possible Number of users.
Everyone in the news industry is scrambling: some are signing deals with AI companies and asking them to pay for their content, while others are suing, claiming that the AI results are stealing their profits.
Los Angeles Times Print
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
The final lifeline?
California is leading the way in the US in forcing Google and other platforms to pay for news, with the aim of getting publishers to take a cut of the advertising revenue that big tech companies earn. The main proposal, AB 886, has passed the House of Representatives but is awaiting a vote in the Senate. Among the bill’s areas of focus are:
- Big platforms need to pay news publishers for their products
- Setting Arbitration Fees
- Requiring news organizations to spend at least 70% of their funding on journalists
- This is similar to protective news laws already in place in Australia and Canada.
George Skelton, a columnist for the Times of Sacramento, predicted: “Key lawmakers have agreed to pass something this summer but haven’t yet decided what it will be. They’re trying to put together a bill that would be difficult to get two-thirds support in the Legislature, acceptable to both parties and able to get Gov. Gavin Newsom’s signature. The governor has remained silent.”
Publishers say the bill is a lifeline and long overdue. (The Los Angeles Times supports AB 886.) But Google is strongly resisting: Last month, the company announced that its search engine would restrict access to some content. california news websiteThis week, Google also “I warned you.” Nonprofit news organizations worry that if the bill passes in California, it will threaten the funding they receive from the state.
It remains to be seen where this will end, but there’s no doubt this is a watershed moment for the news industry, in California and beyond.
As newspapers get smaller and the revenue they need to cover the entire state declines, the debate over who should pay for the news remains more unresolved than ever.
And in an industry that is always steeped in nostalgia (and sometimes blinded by nostalgia), it’s important to point out that it used to be a lot easier to determine who was paying for the news.In “Man of Tomorrow,” another excellent book about Jerry Brown, Jim Newton describes Brown in the early stages of his unconventional political career.
“Whenever he sees a newspaper on a colleague’s desk, he just takes it without asking any questions.”
If we value journalism and freedom of the press, we cannot afford to run away now.
What else to read
Must ReadProgressive district attorneys were a big political trend in California a few years ago, but things aren’t looking so good anymore.
3 quick tips: UCLA’s Gene Block faces criticism in Washington; Newsom faces backlash from close friends; London Breed thinks university can save downtown San Francisco;
LA Times Special“The so-called culture wars are focused on disenfranchising women and others, but at their core, they’re a battle over what it means to be a man.” — Anita Chhabria
Until next week,
Shelby Grad
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