Newsrooms across the country have withered while the stories they produce at great cost enrich big technology companies that pay nothing for sharing them on their platforms. Despite bipartisan support, attempts to make those companies share ad dollars with news publishers have sputtered in Congress.
Now, a California lawmaker from the East Bay is pushing a bill — limited to this state — that would accomplish the same goal using a different approach.
“California has lost more than 100 newspapers in the last decade,” said Assemblywoman Buffy Wicks, an Oakland Democrat, who plans to introduce the California Journalism Protection Act in the coming week. “Our constitutional founders understood the