Google Joins $250 Million Deal to Support Newsrooms in California

Google, a news industry trade group and key California lawmakers announced a first-in-the-nation agreement on Wednesday aimed at shoring up newsrooms in the state with as much as $250 million.

Through a mix of funding from Google, taxpayers and potentially other private sources, the five-year deal would let Google avert a proposed state bill that could force tech companies to pay news organizations when advertising appeared alongside articles on the tech company’s platform.

The announcement was packed with praise for the effort to stabilize the news industry, which has faced layoffs and shuttered newsrooms as readership has shifted online.

“The deal not only provides funding to support hundreds of new journalists but helps rebuild a robust and dynamic California press corps for years to come, reinforcing the vital role of journalism in our democracy,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement.

The trade group, the California News Publishers Association, called the agreement “a first step toward what we hope will become a comprehensive program to sustain local news in the long term.” The author of the bill, Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, praised it for being a “cross-sector commitment” and called it “just the beginning.”

A union representing journalists, however, denounced the deal as a “shakedown,” and lawmakers who had been working for months on more comprehensive proposals criticized its scope. Also, the president pro tempore of the State Senate, Mike McGuire, questioned legislative support for the state’s share of the deal, which would require approval as part of the annual budget process.