The bill, originally introduced in 2021, was recently included in the New York State Senate’s “One House” budget resolution — a major sign of its growing support in the legislature.
Its most recent version was amended to reflect changes that the Senate Majority Conference requested. Under this version, an “eligible news journalist employer” employing 100 or fewer journalists would receive a 50% tax credit against the first $50,000 of each newsroom employee’s salary — and be eligible for up to $200,000 credit in total.
Local news in crisis
“The headline for today, since we are talking about local news, is that ‘local news in New York is in crisis,’” explained Zachary Richner as he addressed the crowd.
Richner is founder of the Empire State Local News Coalition — a statewide advocacy group of more than 150 local news outlets whose mission is to advocate for sound public policy that ensures the work of local news organizations can continue across New York State.
Richner pointed out that 50% of newspapers in New York State have closed since 2004 — “and 25% of our counties are news deserts.”
“That said, I certainly hope that the elected officials of the legislature and Governor Hochul include the Local Journalism Sustainability Act in this year’s state budget,” he added.
In a recent article published in newspapers across the state, Dozier Hasty, publisher of this newspaper and website, was quoted about the importance of this issue: “More than ever, we still need local, responsible organizations which collect, research and disperse, for public edification, the news and information vital to a community. These organizations are independent local newspapers. Thanks to the internet and…
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