By admin 
Gov. Gavin Newsom reflected on his 20-year “awkwardly healthy” — and sometimes testy — relationship with the California press corps on Wednesday after signing a bill to shore up news organizations across the state as the journalism industry has cratered.
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Assembly Bill 2222, which goes into effect next year and lasts through 2032, grants refundable tax credits for news organizations that hire journalists. The credits range from $7,500 to $20,000 for each position — up to $250,000 per newsroom — and also establishes a $20 million training program for new reporters. The bill is subsidized by amending state code to comply with a provision within the federal “One Big, Beautiful Bill” tax law that eliminated a deduction for executives who make $1 million or more in annual salary.
The California Department of Finance opposed the bill because it presents “unlimited fiscal liability” to state coffers by not having a cap, unlike similar programs in Illinois and New York. Despite those concerns, Newsom said he signed it into law because of the “assault on the First Amendment that we’re seeing coming from Washington D.C. and Donald Trump,” referring to the White House’s recent attempts to ban certain outlets.
“It’s journalists that need to report those stories, and local journalists that need to uncover and pull back the facade if democracy is going to survive, let alone thrive,” Newsom said, a week after reportedly pressing Attorney General Rob Bonta to agree to Paramount’s high-profile merger with Warner Brothers.
Critics said the deal failed to meaningfully extract any concessions from Paramount executives and would lead to even more media job losses.
“Local journalism is the backbone of an informed democracy, and today California made clear that the people doing this essential work are worth investing in,” said Assemblymember Chris Ward, D-San Diego, who authored the newly signed law. “This historic investment will help keep reporters in our communities, strengthen nonprofit and public media, and ensure Californians continue to have access to trusted, fact-based local news.”
‘Mayor McHottie’
California has lost over 12,000 journalists since 2002, according to nonprofit Rebuild Local News, which supported the bill along with the SAG-AFTRA union and industry groups like the California Newspaper Publishers Alliance, of which The Sacramento Bee is a member.
Newsom first entered office around that time. Local press gave him the moniker “Mayor McHottie” and depicted him as privileged for his relationship with the Getty family. The oil-rich family underwrote some of Newsom’s early business ventures.
As mayor, Newsom’s colorful personal life provided media fodder due to his affair with a former staffer; his run-ins with a mentally unbalanced stalker; his widely-mocked Harpers’ Bazaar photoshoot with then-wife Kimberly Guilfoyle; and his penchant for dating much younger women following his divorce from Guilfoyle. He later called his appearance at a dinner party with lobbyists at the French Laundry restaurant “a boneheaded mistake” after the San Francisco Chronicle reported that he had broken his own COVID-19 protocols.
“I’ve got to deal with all kinds of terrible calls from reporters doing horrible things that are mean-spirited,” Newsom said in 2006 after the Chronicle reported he had served alcohol at a society party to a 20-year-old woman whom he briefly dated. In his recent memoir, Newsom devoted half a chapter to his disdain for a former Chronicle editor whom he accused of bringing an “acute persistence to the task of deconstructing me.”
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“There were a few moments where (the press corps) wanted to take my head off, and I may have felt the same way,” Newsom recalled Wednesday. “But it’s been healthy and it’s been good. But there’s not a lot of you. There’s not enough of you. I remember the days when my dad, like nothing mattered more to my father than when something was in The Sacramento Bee. That was like his life.”
McClatchy, The Bee’s parent company, recently laid off more than 90 journalists at its papers across the U.S.
New media ventures
Most Americans now consume news via social media and “new media” ventures like podcasts and short-form videos. The outgoing governor has fostered relationships with figures like podcasters Shawn Ryan and Pod Save America, and Twitch streamer Connor Eats Pants.
His advisers told the New Yorker earlier this year that talking to influencers has given Newsom more reach and name recognition than traditional media could.
“He spends most of his time talking to those folks and less of his time talking to more of the traditional reporters these days,” Newsom aide Lindsay Cobia told the magazine.
Newsom has started two podcasts of his own, and has fomented a reputation as one of the more media-savvy members of the Democratic Party.
The outgoing governor is expected to run for president in 2028. On Wednesday, he said he would leave his decision up to “fate.”
Two of his four children, whom he called his “focus group” with ultimate “veto power,” are opposed to him launching a campaign.
“That moment will arrive when it arrives. You’ll know it,” Newsom said. “There’s no such thing as a deadline in these things.”
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