Yue Stella YuCalMattersGov. Gavin Newsom’s budget proposal includes no money for a fund formed last year to boost the state’s local newsrooms, casting doubt on whether a heralded effort to help California journalists will amount to anything and how serious Newsom is about supporting the struggling industry.It’s a significant walkback from an August 2024 deal between state leaders and Google in which they agreed to jointly spend $175 million over five years to fund local journalism.The deal, which Newsom hailed as a “major breakthrough in ensuring the survival of newsrooms” at the time, was reached after Google spent a record sum — $11 million — lobbying state lawmakers successfully to drop two proposals that would have forced Google to pay newsrooms for using
