A pressman looks over a copy of the Los Angeles Times at its Olympic Printing Plant in Los Angeles on Feb. 15, 2024. Publishers of the Times and the San Francisco Chronicle and other news companies want California and Big Tech to honor its commitment to reimburse some of their news gathering expenses. 

Workers enter a building on the Google headquarters campus on July 23, 2025 in Mountain View. Google is one of the big tech companies that have realized enormous revenues from gleaning news and other content at no cost from California news publishers. 

California is beginning to address the crisis facing local journalism by distributing nearly $20 million this year to local news organizations. But the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development is about to fumble the opportunity by having the government pick winners and losers — with journalists being the losers.

Local news has suffered from declining revenue for years, all while tech giants such as Google have used the outlets’ content without compensation to generate enormous revenue. California’s efforts to reverse this trend began with legislation that would have compensated publishers for their losses based on how many reporters they employ. It sailed through the California Assembly and the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2024 before being halted when the governor’s office made a deal directly with Google.

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