Local News Day uplifts the reader side of the community news equation.

I’ve written in this space before about challenges facing the media industry, but this week I am here to report good news about a groundswell of support for community news happening statewide and nationally.

Thursday, April 9, is the first-ever Local News Day. It is a national day of action connecting Americans to local, independent and trusted news sources. It is the result of a grassroots campaign dreamed into existence by John S. Adams, the executive director of Montana Free Press. In just the last three months, the initiative has enlisted over 1,300 local newsrooms nationwide to participate.

Adams explains that the program is inspired by the success of Giving Tuesday and Earth Day. “This is a model we can replicate. We want to build an organic mass movement where everyday Americans are coming together to make it a national day of celebration around local news,” he says.

Here at Monterey County Weekly and Monterey County Now, our goal is to gain 3,000 new subscribers this week. At present, we have just shy of 30,000 subscribers to the daily Monterey County Now e-newsletter. To get to our goal, we are asking for your help.

If you think local health care reporting is informative, culture writing evocative or reporting on a city council vote is important, then it seems like you are a believer in local news. If you’re a reader who thinks knowing about Monterey County’s food and wine scene or where to go to hear live music makes you more connected, then you’re already engaged with the mission of Local News Day. The fact that you are reading this column shows you’re interacting with our coverage – for that, thank you.

This week, I’m asking you to step up and become an ambassador. If you hand over this edition of the paper or forward a Monterey County Now e-newsletter this week to three people in your network and suggest that they subscribe to the newsletter, together we can help make the local information ecosystem healthier and more sustainable.

There is no cost to subscribe to the newsletter. The same is true of our website and the print edition of the paper – all are entirely free to readers.

In Sacramento, there is also a flurry of activity taking place to help shore up the news industry.

“We want to build an organic mass movement.”

In October, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 155 into law, establishing the California Civic Media Program and authorizing the economic development agency GO-Biz to empanel a nine-person advisory board to propose how to distribute $20 million this year to eligible California journalism entities. (I am one of those nine board members.)

The $20 million is the first tranche of what I hope will become an annual allocation. It comprises $10 million in state funds matched by $10 million from Google. GO-Biz has hired the James B. McClatchy Foundation to act as a third-party administrator and establish guidelines for how newsrooms can qualify, and then distribute the state money.

The board has had general agreement that news organization needs to be based in California, have the vast majority of its audience in California and have had media liability insurance for the past 12 months. In addition, all applying newsrooms will have to publicly disclose ownership, have an established media ethics and corrections policy, and not be affiliated with a political entity or lobbying organization.

The board reviewed two options for distribution of the money. One is based on prorated funding of newsrooms based on the number of journalists employed; the other is akin to a grant process where newsrooms would apply to fund a specific journalism project.

I am strongly in favor of distributing the money based on newsroom headcount as that levels the playing field for all organizations, as opposed to pitting them against each other in a competitive process.

The hang-up remains that while the state knows how much money it has to distribute, the best estimate for the number of journalists is imprecise, somewhere between 2,400-3,700. So while the money will be impactful, it will not be transformative. It should be distributed this fall.

The good news is that just like you on Local News Day, the State of California believes in supporting local news.

ERIK CUSHMAN is the Weekly’s publisher. Reach him at erik@montereycountynow.com