State invests in a journalism program that could become a template.

A June 29 hearing of the State Assembly Accountability and Administrative Review Committee began with high-minded platitudes about the importance of journalism in protecting a functional democratic system. “In my view, nothing is more important to the survival of our democracy than a free press and that is what this bill is all about,” said Dan Weintraub, chief of staff to State Sen. Steve Glazer, D-Orinda.

Glazer was the author of Senate Bill 911 – a fitting number, Weintraub said, because it suggested the crisis that journalism as an industry is facing. The bill was meant to bolster the industry, conceived of as a direct public funding mechanism for legitimate news outlets as disinformation and misinformation are still on the rise.

Nobody seemed to disagree with the platitudes: In short, journalism is facing a crisis, and democracy thrives better when the free press is thriving too. But there was disagreement about how, exactly, California should launch into publicly funding journalism. Could a state-appointed committee effectively choose how to allocate funding, or would there be political motivations in which outlets got money? Would startup outlets have an unfair advantage against long-standing, proven newspapers?

As lawmakers and news organizations battled over these critical details, there was enough faith that something would be authored into existence that $25 million in surplus funds were allocated in the state budget for journalism – but then SB 911 died, so there was no bill through which to spend it.

Where SB 911 left off is where a new state-funded journalism program picks up. Instead of going to media outlets, the funds will be administered by the California Local Journalism Fellowship Program out of UC Berkeley, and dollars will go directly to paying early-career journalists, starting this spring. The intent is not just to bolster newsrooms with more staff, but to train up the next generation of California’s journalists.

“It’s fun, it’s exciting, it’s ambitious in scope – but it’s a bit of a band-aid,” says Christa Scharfenberg, director of the fellowship program. “It’s not solving the crisis in journalism.”

Of course no single strategy is going to solve an industry-wide crisis, but I am excited about this effort. It solves a few problems, including creating a pipeline and training new journalists. Finding a way to sustain them longer term is a different challenge. “I don’t think it would be a success if we create 120 local journalism jobs and then by 2028 they all disappear,” Scharfenberg says.

For now there’s funding for three cohorts of up to 40 members each, launching each year for at least three years, starting in the spring of 2023. The program plans to bolster salaries with $50,000 stipends, with newsrooms contributing something as well. Positions will last up to three years.

Scharfenberg is still ironing out the details of how it will work, but imagine a match program: Fellows apply for acceptance into the program, and newsrooms apply for acceptance to host a fellow, then they are matched.

Fellows will receive coaching and mentorship in the newsrooms where they are placed, and also from the program itself. It’s designed for journalists either out of journalism school, or with one to five years of professional experience. They’ll be paid a living wage – something necessary in an industry that historically has relied on unpaid interns.

“We want to set a higher standard for the industry and make it a career people can actually imagine themselves going into,” Scharfenberg says, “and also get the experience and training and mentoring they need.”

I think the fellowship program – run out of an academic institution with a celebrated journalism school – is a great place for California’s $25 million in surplus money. While the original bill would have been more direct, it also raised some concerns, prompting a range of news professionals to oppose it, including the California News Publishers Association (of which the Weekly is a member).

It’s not what Sen. Glazer originally proposed, but in some ways I think it will be better. Getting more journalists-in-training into newsrooms is good for newspapers, and it’s good for democracy.

SARA RUBIN is the Weekly’s editor. Reach her at sara@mcweekly.com