By Blanca Rubio and Evan Low
More than 50 years have passed since President Lyndon Johnson heralded ethnic newspapers for their role in building American unity.
“Your publications represent one of the most American of all our American institutions,” Johnson told a roomful of publishers in the East Room of the White House. “Beyond this moment, beyond this hour, beyond this year, we must work for a better America — for all Americans…(t)his is the work we must always do.”
Read the entire editorial as featured in The Mercury News here.
By Charles F. Champion
A brand management and crisis communication professor I know at a leading university contends that brands reside in the minds of customers, not at company headquarters. So, when crisis strikes, he argues, protecting the brand boils down to this: protecting your customers.
The California News Publishers Association, an organization of news publishers and editors, is charged with protecting the “brands” of 450+ California newspapers. We’ve been fighting against a rising tide of newsroom closures as the COVID-19 wave breaks over our members’ businesses.
Read the entire editorial as featured in The Bay Area Reporter here.
By Chuck Champion
The California Legislature is wrapping up the 2019-2020 legislative session at the end of this month, making decisions in what is one of the most challenging periods in recent history.
It is also a time of crisis for the state’s community news outlets, which have suffered average losses of about half their advertising revenue, on top of a decade of financial decline. Some have closed their doors forever; others have made severe cutbacks in newsroom staff or reduced distribution.
Read the entire editorial as featured in the Monterey County Weekly here.
By Staff
Sacramento, CA – On Monday August 10, 2010 Assemblywoman Blanca Rubio (D- Baldwin Park) announced the introduction of Assembly Bill 323 (AB323), the Save Local Journalism Act.
The bill is aimed at strengthening community news organizations across the state while protecting their ability to provide all Californians with important information about news and events in their communities.
Read the entire editorial as featured in Black Voice News here.
By ARTURO CARMONA, SANDY CLOSE AND REGINA WILSON
In this moment of reckoning with systemic racial injustice, our country’s ethnic media outlets are serving an important role that mainstream media alone cannot fill. Throughout the years, these outlets have spoken for marginalized and vulnerable communities, serving to improve civic engagement and support cross-cultural communication within American society.
Read the entire editorial as featured in the Los Angeles Times here.
By Peter Leroe Munoz
The personal and economic toll of the pandemic is painfully clear. Tragically, we have lost more than 100,000 Americans, and many businesses have eliminated jobs. Local newspapers have kept citizens and consumers informed throughout the crisis, but these outlets also suffered due to COVID-19 and need support to continue to provide valuable information in these uncertain times.
Read the entire editorial as featured in The Mercury News here.
A Free Press Keeps Government Honest
By Ariel Calonne
I support local journalism because the Constitution demands a free press to protect our democracy. That sounds very big and conceptual, so let me break it down to what I understand and why I care.
My career inside local government has taken me to four great cities — Palo Alto, Boulder, Ventura, and Santa Barbara. The common thread between these diverse cities is an enlightened populace that actively participates in their city government. In other words, cities work and communities thrive when the people control local government, never the other way around. “Of the people, by the people, for the people” means we are accountable to ourselves, as Santa Barbarans and Americans, for building a great community.
Read the entire editorial as featured in the Santa Barbara Independent here.
By Ben Trefny
We are living in a time when accessible, accurate information is extraordinarily important. Local news outlets are foundational to that purpose. They illuminate the details of a protest movement determined to overwhelm historic oppression. They provide critical updates and context about a deadly pandemic that’s transformed how we live. Local news outlets reflect change. And they effect change as well.
Read the entire editorial as featured in the San Francisco Chronicle here.
By Editorial Board
Last month, the Baltimore Sun won a Pulitzer Prize for local reporting for uncovering a scheme in which the mayor of Baltimore sold thousands of copies (in some cases, nonexistent copies) of a children’s book she had self-published to Maryland’s flagship hospital network, which she helped oversee. The mayor resigned.
Read the entire editorial in the Los Angeles Times here.
By Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg
Note to readers: Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg filed this letter on May 12 with the bankruptcy judge who is adjudicating McClatchy’s case in New York City. Steinberg then submitted it to The Bee as an Op-Ed.
For nearly as long as there has been a city of Sacramento, journalists from The Sacramento Bee have been keeping a watchful eye on what we do inside City Hall. In my current job as mayor of Sacramento, and in my former role as President Pro Tem of the California State Senate, I have experienced firsthand the paper’s important role in exposing local and state officials who don’t sufficiently safeguard the public treasury or the public trust.
Read the entire editorial as featured in The Sacramento Bee here.
