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Dee Anne Finken is too diplomatic to say so outright, but she’s gobsmacked by a new report on how to support local news in Washington.
The Clark County grandmother spent much of the last five years working to save local journalism, as a volunteer with the League of Women Voters of Washington.
Lately Finken’s among around 40 interested parties talking to legislative staff about reintroducing Senate Bill 5400, which would tax tech giants profiting from news content and use proceeds to support newsroom jobs. The bill has been refined through multiple public hearings and committee debates since it was introduced by state Sen. Marko Liias in early 2025.
Yet the new report, by a group funded by the Press Forward philanthropy organization, urges legislators to radically alter the bill.
Its proposal would give officials leeway to choose which outlets to support, weakening guardrails preventing the government from influencing the press. It also calls for funding non-journalism organizations.
Finken was taken aback, especially given concerns about the Trump administration choosing which news outlets receive access in Washington, D.C.
“We need to deliver something that makes sure there’s no opportunity for misuse of funds, and that it’s not based on political preferences or philosophical preferences,” she said.
Finken helped write the League’s 2022 report on the state of local news in Washington. Then she helped draft its 2023 position, stating that local journalism is essential to democracy and it’s the government’s responsibility “to provide support for conditions under which credible local journalism can survive and thrive.” Its position has been adopted by other leagues around the country.
SB 5400 would raise more than $20 million annually. That would help sustain the state’s roughly 150 news outlets and prevent further job losses.
There are legitimate concerns around government supporting news. So policies like SB 5400 must be written so dollars are distributed based on objective criteria, ensuring officials have no influence on coverage.
The model, drafted in Congress and used by every state providing tax credits to support journalism jobs, allocates dollars based on the number of newsroom employees. That’s been SB 5400’s design since it was introduced.
But last week, the Washington State News Alliance presented its report urging legislators to discard that model. It favors more subjective, flexible criteria “tied to community impact, information access, and demonstrated public service.”
That sounds innocuous and uses language common in progressive circles. But the change would enable officials to choose who receives support based on “equity criteria” that align with their politics.
Finken said that’s akin to President Donald Trump deciding which outlets can access the White House, based on whether he likes their coverage.
“Right now we are seeing what happens when a person in a position of authority says, ‘oh, I don’t like a certain type of coverage,’ which is all very subjective, right?” she said. “When you see CNN cannot go into the White House … that’s all based on subjective criteria.”
WSNA received a $75,000 grant from Press Forward’s Washington chapter to produce a newsletter, convene a May conference and produce the report. It surveyed 20 organizations and interviewed 17 people, including representatives of political groups and government agencies. Nine news people were interviewed, mostly at small nonprofits.
The lead author, Anika Anand, previously worked for a nonprofit called LION that received Meta and Google funding and opposed policies like SB 5400 in Congress and other states. She was unavailable to comment.
Anand earlier worked with programs trying to reframe the local-journalism crisis as a “civic news” issue. That conversation usually starts with a dismissal of newspapers’ viability and ends with a push to give non-journalism organizations support generated to save local news.
Another member of WSNA, Sarah Gustavus Lim, still works for LION, which stands for Local Independent Online News.
LION does some good work supporting small outlets. But it has repeatedly sided with tech companies fighting legislation that would have saved thousands of newsroom jobs and sustained news organizations, small and large, around the country.
WSNA may have the best of intentions and not be trying to torpedo SB 5400.
But arriving after years of work on the bill with a demand for major changes and weaker guardrails could have that effect. At the least, it sows division among the coalition of news outlets, trade groups and advocates like the League that’s working on the legislation.
Intentional or not, this mirrors a “divide and conquer” tactic Google and Meta use whenever a state or nation tries to address the imbalance of power between them and publishers, with legislation requiring them to pay.
California and Oregon nearly passed policies like SB 5400 that were larger and more ambitious. Both saw uncertainty and division created when LION and a few outlets opposed the legislation because they were tech allies or it didn’t precisely suit their particular situation.
Opposition melted in California when it stopped trying to get tech firms to pay publishers. Its new, taxpayer-funded journalism bill was signed into law Wednesday.
Australia and Canada stood strong and have laws requiring platforms to fairly compensate publishers, despite opposition by tech companies, organizations like LION and a relatively few outlets.
Canada’s version of SB 5400 is now being attacked by another tech ally, the Trump administration. It’s pressuring Canada to scuttle its Online News Act as part of trade negotiations.
Publishers are also suing OpenAI and Microsoft for alleged theft of copyrighted material. The cases may affirm that fair-use provisions don’t give tech companies free use of copyrighted news stories, closing a dubious loophole exploited during the rise of search, social media and now AI platforms.
Regardless of the lawsuits’ outcome, government intervention is still needed to help sustain the local news industry, which is mostly composed of around 5,000 local newspapers.
Government must do so in ways that give officials no opportunity to pick and choose which outlets benefit.
The League’s support is contingent on that approach, said Finken, a retired journalist and journalism instructor.
Since it began working to support local news in 2021, “we keep coming back to the importance of making sure that any legislation we work for, that we support, that we help write, really features some clear guidelines, objective provisions that lawmakers from both sides of the aisle can support,” she said.
Finken’s also concerned about fracturing the group working on SB 5400, especially with newspaper layoffs driving home the urgency.
“We’ve been fortunate that we haven’t had a number of closures this past year in Washington, but the staffing is being hit right and left,” she said. “So we need to bond together. We need to work together, and we can’t get caught in this discussion about what would be ideal.”
Indeed. It’s a complicated discussion and new and different perspectives are good, as long as they don’t derail years of work by people like Liias and Finken trying to save local journalism in Washington state.
This is excerpted from the free, weekly Voices for a Free Press newsletter. Sign up to receive it at the Save the Free Press website. Seattle Times’ Brier Dudley is the editor of the Free Press Initiative, which aims to inform the public about issues facing newspapers, local news coverage, and a free press. You can learn more about the Free Press Initiative, or sign up for a newsletter, at https://company.seattletimes.com/save-the-free-press/.
