HSPA Newsletter articles

California lawmakers have sent Gov. Gavin Newsom a sweeping new plan to bolster local journalism, approving the Community NEWS Act (AB 2222) with bipartisan supermajorities in both chambers.

The “NEWS” in the Community NEWS Act is an acronym for “Newsroom Employment and Workforce Sustainability.” The bill was first introduced on Feb. 19 by Assemblymembers Christopher Ward and Buffy Wicks, and it was sponsored by the nonprofit Rebuild Local News.

Ward spoke on behalf of the Act during the California Assembly Revenue and Taxation Committee hearing on April 13: “AB 2222 is ultimately a jobs bill and a democracy bill, helping to keep reporters in communities and ensuring that Californians have access to trusted local information.”

AB 2222 lays out a five-year program for providing tax credits to news organizations employing local journalists. From 2027 through 2031, eligible local news outlets may receive refundable tax credits accordingly:

• $20,000 per year for each of their first five qualifying full-time journalists
• $15,000 per year for each additional qualifying full-time journalist
• $7,500 for each qualifying part-time journalist
• An additional $15,000 for each full-time journalist in a newly created journalism role

Rebuild Local News’ Policy Director Matt Pearce worked hand in hand with Assemblymember Ward’s office on the bill’s design and language.

Moments after AB 2222 passed, Rebuild Local News’ Steven Waldman posted to social media, “Pinch me. The California legislature just passed the most significant measure to help community news in the nation — probably in American history. Passed with supermajorities in both houses and now goes to Gov. Newsom.”

For E&P’s audience, Rebuild Local News’ Waldman, Pearce and Senior Policy Manager Gene Perry authored a comprehensive and nuanced “Shoptalk” explainer about AB 2222’s significance, support and its practical implementation. 

In California, AB 2222 faced formidable opposition, notably from the California Chamber of Commerce and California Taxpayers Association.

Advocates for AB 2222 represented a coalition of parties sometimes on the opposite sides of negotiation tables. Associations like the California News Publishers Association and the News Media Alliance, representing publishers and owners, linked arms with labor unions — including the NewsGuild-CWA local chapters and SAG-AFTRA — to champion the cause.

Danielle Coffey, president and CEO of the News/Media Alliance (NMA) — an association representing more than 2,200 news media organizations — said: “The genius of this bill was twofold. First, it’s platform-agnostic, which means the program’s recipients can be any type of local news organization employing local journalists: print, digital, broadcast, audio or streaming. They can operate as nonprofits, for-profit organizations or even as independent journalists filing as sole proprietors.”

There are, of course, some benchmarks to eligibility. Applicants must disclose ownership; they cannot be owned by a political action committee (PAC). In the case of broadcast organizations, they must be FCC-licensed. They must carry liability insurance and are required to publicly publish a corrections policy. At least 33% of their audience must be in California.

NMA’s Coffey lauded former California state Sen. Steve Glazer, who helped lay the groundwork for AB 2222. In 2024, he introduced SB 1327, which similarly sought to use tax credits to encourage California news organizations to hire and retain local journalists. It didn’t pass statehouse muster.

Coffey said, “The successful 2026 passage of the Community NEWS Act was due to a news community that came together and rallied around the proposal. It’s a community that can sometimes feel like a circular firing squad, difficult to build consensus on most dilemmas. In the past, legislative proposals have stalled because they became mired in infighting over which news media organizations should be eligible for legislative relief and which should be intentionally excluded.”

America’s Newspapers’ President and CEO Dean Ridings concurred. In a statement to E&P, Ridings said, “America’s Newspapers applauds the California Legislature for passing the Community NEWS Act (AB 2222) and commends the News/Media Alliance, CNPA and all of the organizations that worked so hard to make this legislation possible. The bill’s inclusive, news-neutral approach is especially important, recognizing that strong local journalism depends on supporting news organizations of all sizes, structures and formats. This is an excellent example of what our industry can accomplish when we work together.”

James Kass, executive director at KAWL Public Media in San Franciso offered perspective from public media and radio: "I think it's wonderful. Investing in local news throughout this incredibly diverse state is important at any time, but especially now when media consolidation and growing distrust in larger media institutions is hurting all of us. As an organization dedicated to investing in a new generation of journalists who represent multiple communities throughout the Bay Area, we couldn't be happier that California is making this kind of investment in all of us. A state as large and as diverse as California — geographically, ethnically, economically, that faces all kinds of issues — deserves this kind of investment."

Sept. 30 is the deadline for Gov. Newsom’s signature or veto.

Read More Here

Get answers to your questions on this vital component of government transparency.

Join us for an informative Zoom workshop designed to keep your newspaper updated on current Indiana Public Notice Laws and to better understand the processes involved with the placement of Public Notice advertisements. 

It is imperative someone from your newspaper attend one of these sessions.

Workshop Options:  

️ Monday, August 17
⏰ 1:30 PM - 3:00 PM EST

Click here to register

OR

️ Wednesday, August 19
⏰ 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM EST

Click here to register

While there is no cost, registration is required.

Registration Deadline: 5:00 pm, August 11.

Presenters:

Steve Wolff is an attorney and serves as a vice president for governmental affairs and procurement at The Corydon Group. He is a lobbyist for the Hoosier State Press Association.  Steve joined the Corydon Group in 2019, bringing a wealth of experience in lobbying, procurement, regulation, compliance, economic development, business development, and grassroots and political strategy. Steve has held numerous positions inside and outside state and local government.  Steve has also served as paid staff on federal and state campaigns.  

*********************

John Cochran is a vice president for governmental affairs and procurement with The Corydon Group. He is a lobbyist for Hoosier State Press Association.

John well understands the nuance and processes of Indiana government. An attorney with over two decades experience in public affairs, he has worked in multiple state executive agencies, the Indiana General Assembly, and the Indianapolis Mayor’s Office. He most recently served as vice president of public affairs for the Indiana Economic Development Corporation (IEDC). In that role, he served as liaison between IEDC and state and local government.

Need more information? Email Pamela Wells-Lego, Executive Director, Hoosier State Press Association - plego@hspa.com.

Publishers/Editors, and Newsroom Staffs:

MARK YOUR CALENDARS - HSPA will be hosting the Journalism Conference & Awards Luncheon at the Crown Plaza Airport Hotel in Indianapolis on Friday, September 25.

We have three informative sessions in the morning followed by our annual awards luncheon.

Registration Opens at 8:30am with first session beginning at 9am.

Session 1 - Creatively Covering Your Community

Presenter – Lindsey Young Co-Owner of Kansas Publishing Ventures

will talk about how to freshen up your weekly routine with some story ideas she has implemented over the course of the last 10 years. If you feel your content has gotten a little stale, then consider trying some of these new story ideas.

Session 2 - Recruiting Using Earn Your Press Pass

Presenter - Lindsey Young, Co-Owner of Kansas Publishing Ventures

In addition to running newspapers, Kansas Publishing Ventures has developed an on-demand training program called Earn Your Press Pass, which is designed to train a lay person to be able to write a variety of stories for their local newspaper. The Youngs use this program in their own newsrooms, and EYPP has been deployed in over 20 states. Learn how to use this training (which is free to Hoosier Press Association members!) to recruit freelancers, part-timers and even full-timers into your newsroom.

Session 3 – The Public Access Battle – Strategies for More Transparency and Open Doors

Presenter Kris Cundiff - Local Legal Initiative Attorney with the Reporter’s Committee For Freedom Of The Press

Luncheon and Awards to follow at Noon.

For conference information and to register click link here –  2026 Journalism Conference & Awards Luncheon Registration.

Deadline to register September 4^th.

If you have any questions, please email me  sgoldsby@hspa.com or call HSPA at (317) 803-4772.

Looking forward to seeing you on September 25^th!

By Kris Cundiff 

Journalists and news organizations have long been strong voices for the public’s right to know. They’re even more effective when they join forces with other newsrooms to push for greater government transparency and accountability.

In 1997, seven Indiana newspapers banded together to conduct an unprecedented test of Indiana’s public access laws. The news outlets sent reporters to all 92 counties in the state to request certain public records, including death certificates and crime logs. Their findings, outlined in a 1998 series of articles called “The State of Secrecy,” concluded that Indiana’s public access laws were “often ignored and unenforced.”

“The State of Secrecy” was a powerful project that helped shape Indiana’s public access laws into what we know today. In response to the series, the state legislature passed new reforms, including statutes that permanently established the Office of the Public Access Counselor.

Through those statutes, Indiana lawmakers set up a path for the press and the public to enforce the state’s public access laws without being forced to take a dispute to court, creating a formal complaint process for challenging public records request denials via OPAC. Under the law, the entire process should take no more than a month.

In creating OPAC, state lawmakers envisioned an office that is responsive to Hoosiers seeking to exercise their right of public access under the law. Unfortunately, that’s not what OPAC is today. As the Reporters Committee’s Indiana-based attorney, I’ve heard from numerous journalists across the state that OPAC is dragging its feet in response to their complaints, flouting statutory deadlines that are crystal clear in the law.

So in July, news organizations once again banded together to fight for greater transparency. On behalf of a media coalition, I sent a letter to Public Access Counselor Jennifer Ruby, raising concerns about the office’s unresponsiveness and requested a meeting to start a dialogue.

The letter states that members of the coalition have consistently had to wait many months just to receive confirmation that their complaint was forwarded to the public agency at issue — something the PAC is supposed to do “immediately” — and have waited even longer for an advisory opinion that, by law, they should receive within 30 days. It also notes that in the past year, coalition members have been unable to reliably connect with OPAC staff by phone, email, or in person with informal inquiries, as required by law.

The “end result is that instead of helping facilitate agencies’ compliance with public records laws, the OPAC has become a black hole into which complaints disappear indefinitely,” the letter argues.

OPAC has faced challenges in recent years, including a 2024 law that chipped away at the office’s power and independence from politics. When Ruby took office in 2025, state officials said OPAC faced a backlog of cases.

A recent IndyStar analysis found that during Ruby’s 16-month tenure, OPAC took an average of nearly 250 days to issue an advisory opinion — more than eight times longer than what’s required by the law. IndyStar also found that Ruby ruled in favor of government agencies in two-thirds of published opinions, contrary to her predecessor Luke Britt, who sided in favor of the public in two-thirds of cases analyzed by the Star.

The media coalition letter acknowledged that some delay during a transition period is inevitable. But the PAC’s annual reports from the last decade show that while the office is expected to receive an uptick in complaints this year, it’s not facing a dramatic increase that would excuse a significant backlog over more than a year.

The coalition has requested a meeting with OPAC to discuss these concerns and consider possible solutions. If OPAC doesn’t want to start a dialogue, we’re prepared to take legal action.

Before I joined the Reporters Committee, I worked for nearly seven years at OPAC, so I know how the office is supposed to operate. We don’t want to have an adversarial relationship with OPAC. We just want the office to follow the law.

If you have issues with OPAC, reach out to me at kcundiff@rcfp.org. I’m always here to help with any legal questions you have in the course of reporting.

Kris Cundiff is the Indiana Local Legal Initiative attorney at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. He lives just outside of Indianapolis. 

By Steve Key - HSPA Foundation Board Member and Retired HSPA Executive Director

There’s a lot of angst in the newspaper world over the future of newspaper publication of public notice. With 30 years of lobbying the Indiana General Assembly and either opposing, supporting or trying to amend more 80 public notice bills, I think I have the basis to ask publishers, editors, and ad directors a simple question.

How much love and attention do you give to public notices?

I’m not talking about just professionally receiving the ads and making sure they get published to meet required deadlines. That’s just doing the same service you would provide to any advertising customer. I’m talking about going above and beyond to show the public the importance of public notices and the unique role newspapers have had in making sure those notices are seen by community readers.

How many publishers have instituted a policy requiring the advertising department to forward all public notices received to the news department? With news staffs slashed over the past few years, let’s help them find stories tied to public notices. Editors should appreciate the opportunity to create local content from notices walking through their front doors in the shape of a public notice.

How many editors take the time to review public notices or have their reporters split up the task of actually reading the public notices to see what stories exist? I firmly believe one story a week could be developed by even the smallest of newspapers if the effort is made.

The story might be a heads up on a zoning request to accommodate a business. It might be a small local business, a major construction by a national or international corporation, or a hot-button entity for the public, such as a data center. Even a mundane public notice can spark a story about the publication requirement. What’s the rationale behind requiring a person to give notice of a change in their name? The particular notice might not in itself be newsworthy, but the local, state or national rationale for a public notice is in itself newsworthy. If newspapers don’t educate the public on the reason public notices should be placed before them, who else do we expect will do it for us?

And when a newspaper does use a public notice, would it kill us to insert a sentence explaining that the story was sparked by a public notice? Just one sentence: "This story was sparked by a public notice published in the newspaper on (insert date)."

How many newspapers have reported on the proposed budgets of government units within a county? Have any of them ever referred the public to the budget notice required? I’m not saying it hasn’t happened, but I can’t say anyone have ever brought that occurrence to my attention.

If you want to preserve public notices, show them some love. Or get used to making it a routine to check non-newspaper websites for the public notices that newspapers have been publishing in the United States since before we became a country.

Steve Key - HSPA Foundation Board Member and Retired HSPA Executive Director 

By Lisa Renze

The first on-location assignment I vividly recall receiving in my budding career came when I was 14, reporting for my hometown radio station at our county fair. Wielding a mic emblazoned with the call letters KILR on its flag, I had anxious and eager butterflies burning holes in my belly. Managing that first live hit without bumbling the conversation entirely remains my eternal green flag into journalism. I was hooked. 

The business has changed — SO VERY MUCH — in the last four decades, but at least one truth remains: local news attracts and keeps an audience. And fair coverage is great local news, making it not just good for the community, but good for business. 

To that end, Free Press Indiana is teaming up with the good folks at the Statehouse File to help you provide the stories you crave for your audiences from this year’s Indiana State Fair. 

Need Band Day photos? We can help. Have a young person participating in a special event that you just can't cover, let us know about it — if we can get to it, we sure will try. 

With the fair less than a week away, we’re asking for your help to guide us to the stories we should tackle. Please complete this Google sheet with as much info as you have available. Then, we’ll work with Colleen Steffen, the wonderful coach of the Statehouse File team, and her students, to figure out how many stories can be completed.  

We won't be able to get to everything, but the sooner we know what folks may be seeking, the better we'll be able to plan. And we’ll let you know what our plans are when they’re set.

This is the second year for this partnership, and we’re eager to see it expand. If you’re curious about how it works, reach out to folks like Chris Hardie at the Western Wayne News and ask him how they incorporated the students’ coverage. Chris and his team had the opportunity to cover some of the Band Day events, but because there were so many local bands participating that day, they just couldn't be everywhere for everything. The Statehouse File content was a good option for Chris and his team, and the expanded coverage gave readers more opportunity to see local students doing great things. 

Please reach out with any questions you may have. 

Thanks for reading. 

 

Lisa Renze

Director of Strategic Partnerships

Free Press Indiana

Congratulations to Natalie Acra with the Greensburg Daily News for designing the new HSPA logo.

We will be launching the new logo starting September 1st!

Thank you to all the folks that submitted logos to HSPA. We had great participation and Indiana newspapers still have talented creative staff.

As a thank-you for your membership in the Hoosier State Press Association, we’re pleased to offer you a complimentary subscription to E&P Magazine. Each month, you’ll receive our award-winning print edition delivered to your mailbox, featuring exclusive interviews with industry leaders, original reporting, practical revenue and audience strategies, technology insights, and in-depth analysis created specifically for news media professionals. Thank you for your continued support of the industry and the vital role you play in protecting and advancing journalism. Simply click this link to activate your free subscription:EandP.press/IN.

About E&P

Founded in 1884, E&P Magazine (Editor & Publisher) is the authoritative voice of the news media industry, covering the people, platforms, technology and business models shaping journalism today. While E&P’s roots are in newspapers and traditional publishing, its mission has evolved alongside the industry itself — now reporting on digital, broadcast, audio, nonprofit, ethnic, independent and emerging media organizations across North America and beyond.

For more than 140 years, E&P has chronicled the transformation of journalism, from the golden age of print to the digital revolution and today’s rapidly evolving AI-driven media landscape. Its audience includes publishers, editors, chief revenue officers, digital leaders, newsroom innovators and media entrepreneurs seeking insight into the future of news publishing.

E&P publishes a monthly print magazine distributed to thousands of senior news media executives, newsroom leaders and industry decision-makers. The publication is also distributed at major media conferences and trade events throughout the year. In addition, the digital edition and daily industry coverage on EditorAndPublisher.com reach more than 45,000 unique monthly visitors looking for timely reporting, analysis, case studies and commentary about the business of journalism.

Each weekday, E&P delivers the latest industry headlines, trends and executive moves through its popular #NewsMedia Today newsletter, emailed daily at noon (ET) to more than 30,000 subscribers. E&P also publishes E&P Exclusives, featuring original reporting, interviews, opinion and sponsored industry insights.

E&P is also home to the prestigious EPPY Awards®, widely regarded as the news publishing industry’s highest honor for digital excellence. Recent honorees include ESPN Digital, CNN, Block Club Chicago, NBC News Digital, The Arizona Republic, Consumer Reports, Detroit Free Press and Honolulu Civil Beat.

In September 2019, E&P was acquired by The Curated Experiences Group, led by media consultant and longtime industry advocate Mike Blinder. A former newspaper digital pioneer and author of “Survival Selling,” Blinder has spent decades working alongside media organizations worldwide, helping publishers navigate transformation, audience growth and revenue strategy.

Since 2020, Blinder has hosted the widely followed vodcast series E&P Reports, featuring candid conversations with influential voices in journalism, media technology and public affairs. Guests have included newsroom leaders, media innovators, journalists, academics and policymakers discussing the challenges — and opportunities — shaping the future of news media. 

Publishers/Editors, and Newsroom Staffs:

MARK YOUR CALENDARS - HSPA will be hosting the Journalism Conference & Awards Luncheon at the Crown Plaza Airport Hotel in Indianapolis on Friday, September 25.

We have three informative sessions in the morning followed by our annual awards luncheon.

Registration Opens at 8:30am with first session beginning at 9am.

Session 1 - Creatively Covering Your Community

Presenter – Lindsey Young Co-Owner of Kansas Publishing Ventures

will talk about how to freshen up your weekly routine with some story ideas she has implemented over the course of the last 10 years. If you feel your content has gotten a little stale, then consider trying some of these new story ideas.

Session 2 - Recruiting Using Earn Your Press Pass

Presenter - Lindsey Young, Co-Owner of Kansas Publishing Ventures

In addition to running newspapers, Kansas Publishing Ventures has developed an on-demand training program called Earn Your Press Pass, which is designed to train a lay person to be able to write a variety of stories for their local newspaper. The Youngs use this program in their own newsrooms, and EYPP has been deployed in over 20 states. Learn how to use this training (which is free to Hoosier Press Association members!) to recruit freelancers, part-timers and even full-timers into your newsroom.

Session 3 – The Public Access Battle – Strategies for More Transparency and Open Doors

Presenter Kris Cundiff - Local Legal Initiative Attorney with the Reporter’s Committee For Freedom Of The Press

Luncheon and Awards to follow at Noon.

For conference information and to register click link here –  2026 Journalism Conference & Awards Luncheon Registration.

Deadline to register September 4^th.

If you have any questions, please email me  sgoldsby@hspa.com or call HSPA at (317) 803-4772.

Looking forward to seeing you on September 25^th!

All newspapers with staff who placed in the 2026 Journalism Contest have been notified via email. If you received a notification, please review the listed names carefully and submit any spelling corrections to sgoldsby@hspa.com as soon as possible.