COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW – 13/06/2019
Andrew McCormick
As the news industry continues to suffer layoffs and sinking profits, efforts are afoot in Congress to lend a hand. In recent months, two bills have been introduced that aim to help publications reassert themselves amid a challenging market, and a group of congress members, lead by Mark DeSaulnier, a Democrat from California, have dedicated themselves to seeking further solutions.
In the early 1990s, when DeSaulnier was a city council member in Concord, California—a Bay Area city, northeast of San Francisco—he recalls tough reporters in the front row at every council meeting. Those reporters knew local politics inside and out, DeSaulnier says. As the years passed—and DeSaulnier graduated to mayor, to the Contra Costa County board of supervisors, and in the mid-2000s to state senator—he saw both the quantity and the quality of local journalists dwindle, even as the Bay Area’s population was expanding rapidly. “I went from answering really intelligent questions to having to tell reporters where they could find things on the county website,” DeSaulnier says. Today, DeSaulnier represents California’s 11th congressional district in Washington, DC, but local news remains front-of-mind. “I really despair,” he says. “There need to be critical writers out there, with the time to stay at it.” As the Bay Area news scene continued to deteriorate, it struck DeSaulnier that Congress might be able to help.