A provision of the newly passed 2024-2025 New York State Budget makes the state the first in the nation to take a tangible financial step toward supporting local journalism. A three-year program provides $30 million a year in tax credits to help keep eligible newspapers and broadcasters with local news coverage in business. The provision was added as the budget, first proposed in January by Gov. Hochul, worked its way through the approval process.
Eligible local journalism operations can receive a 50% refundable tax credit against the first $50,000 of an employee’s salary, up to a total of $300,000 per business. Included is $4 million to be allocated to incentivize print and broadcast businesses to hire new journalists. The remaining $26 million will be split evenly between journalism businesses with fewer than 100 employees and those with more than 100 employees.
State Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie said, “Local journalism plays an essential role in our communities. Not only does it provide critical coverage of local elections, but it also joins communities together through a shared knowledge of high school sports teams, new businesses coming to the area and issues impacting readers’ everyday lives. This funding is the necessary first step in ensuring local journalism is protected and supported for many years to come.”
Greenburgh Town Supervisor Paul Feiner noted that two local newspapers, the Scarsdale Inquirer and Rivertowns Enterprise recently went out of business and praised local activists who lobbied for state aid for local journalism.
“The decline of local news is a threat to democracy,” Feiner said. “Credit for the new law should go in large part to the efforts of a former opponent of mine, Lucas Cioffi who led the effort to find a way to save local news publications or to start up new local publications. Mr. Cioffi, along with Sandra Nam, QigoChat Inc and the Westchester Youth Congress organized a very impressive virtual community meeting in February that was attended by over 300 residents. The virtual meeting encouraged the community to think of creative initiatives that could help local publications survive.”
Zachary Richner, founder of the Empire State Local News Coalition, said, “The objectivity of this credit shows that there is a fair way for public policy to support local news without jeopardizing journalistic integrity. This program is a model for other states across the U.S. to follow as communities across the country raise their voices to save local news.”