BBG supports small-town USA by backing the LJSA ?
By Tony Baranowski, Publisher, Times-Citizen Communications (Iowa Falls, Iowa), Crystal Good, Founder and Publisher, Black By God The West Virginian, Miles Layton, longtime rural community journalist, Don Smith, Executive Director, West Virginia Press Association, Jim Iovino, Director, WVU NewStart program and Visiting Assistant Professor of Media Innovation
Stakeholders in journalism, news, and the general welfare of a fact-based democracy have been beside themselves in recent weeks as a little-known bill that they hoped would slip its way into the broader Build Back Better plan was treated as little more than an expendable remnant.
In the interest of price chopping and compromise, the Local Journalism Sustainability Act has at various times been slashed, trimmed, or cut entirely in the deal-making process, seemingly with little consideration for what it could actually accomplish, or what’s at stake if it’s lost.
The common and simplified perception is it would be a life preserver offered to struggling newspapers across the country. Followers may have also read high-minded arguments that those very newspapers are necessary to preserve democracy as we know it in the United States of America.
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