Editor’s note: The California Journalism Preservation Act, currently under consideration by state legislators, will likely have an enormous impact on the ability of news organizations like this one to bring in new digital readers. Our CEO, Jo Ellen Green Kaiser, sent this letter to the California Legislative Jewish Caucus on April 12, asking that its members educate themselves on the CJPA before they vote on it and seriously consider whether the bill will help or harm the cause of good journalism in California. We humbly ask that you, our readers, do the same and let your legislators know what you think.
To the Honorable Scott Wiener, Jesse Gabriel, and Members of the California Legislative Jewish Caucus,
I am writing today to educate you about the California Journalism Preservation Act, which will directly harm J. The Jewish News of Northern California.
The aim of the CJPA is well-intentioned. The act is designed to tax internet platforms for every link to a news site. Because platforms advertise against this news content, the goal is to compensate news publishers for what may be seen as a loss of ad revenue that would otherwise go to the publishers.
The fact is that the ad revenue at issue is not revenue that any publisher with under 1 million views per day would be likely to obtain. The advertisers in question are “programmatic” advertisers who place ads based on quantity, not type of content. Platforms like Google search are able to attract advertisers precisely because they can aggregate all kinds of content, not just news. As noted journalism professor Jeff Jarvis has pointed out, even the largest publishers are unlikely to lose much of this revenue in any case — Google says news only accounts for 2% of searches (and thus likely 2% or less of its revenue).
Most community and ethnic media, like J. do not even attempt to acquire this type of advertising. All of our advertising at J. is direct — advertising we solicit. Because community and ethnic media like J. do not use programmatic advertising, we are not harmed by the platforms. To the contrary, the platforms are very helpful to us, because it is their links which bring us new readers. Of J.’s 200,000 unique readers per month, over 50% come to us from Google search. Without that organic search, some readers will be unable to find J. at all.
Indeed, the possible passage of the CJPA has the potential to destroy our discoverability on the internet. Google’s VP of Global News Partnerships has already said Google is “beginning a short-term test,” which “involves removing links to California news websites.” Even cutting links to J. for a few days will diminish our traffic and hurt our discoverability.
There are many reasons to oppose the CJPA. But we are writing to you, as members of the Jewish Caucus, to seek your protection for J. The Jewish News of Northern California. Please take this information into consideration.