Ward 4 Councilmember Janeese Lewis George is advancing a novel idea that, if nothing else, should ensure she gets some favorable coverage from D.C.’s dwindling local press corps: She wants to fund local news via a new government program.

Lewis George introduced the Local News Funding Act Monday, which, if passed, will set aside 0.1 percent of the city’s budget each year (about $11.5 million based on the current spending plan) to help prop up locally focused outlets. According to a copy of the legislation provided to Loose Lips, the bill would empower residents to decide how that funding is allocated by letting them award “news coupons” to organizations they support.

That provision is designed to guard against one of the most common criticisms of government funding for news outlets: that politicians shouldn’t have a say in how to fund the very journalists that theoretically hold them accountable. The idea of some sort of public support for journalism has grown in popularity as the industry has collapsed over the past few decades, with some states already experimenting with the idea, but D.C. would still be the first jurisdiction anywhere in the country to try this particular kind of program. Ward 1 Councilmember Brianne Nadeau has signed on to co-introduce the bill.

Before you worry that this is some sort of scheme to prop up City Paper specifically, Lewis George envisions a wide variety of news organizations qualifying for this funding. A summary of the bill circulated by the councilmember’s staff suggests that “grant recipients could include the local section of a national newspaper; community-focused newspapers covering news that matters for Black readers, Spanish-speaking residents, or neighborhood-specific audiences; radio stations or podcasters; independent journalists; and breaking news sources on social media or platforms yet to emerge.” Notably, TV stations are excluded from eligibility here, not as a commentary on their (sometimes ethically questionable) journalism, but because the city already funds public access content via cable franchise fees.

The concept may be novel, but the bill’s architects, which include the left-leaning Democracy Policy Network, say it mirrors Seattle’s “democracy voucher” program for funding local campaigns. The city gives voters four $25 vouchers that they’re free to assign to publicly funded candidates of their choice; similarly, every registered voter in D.C. would get five news coupons to hand out. Any qualifying outlet that receives at least 250 coupons will earn grant funding.

Mark Histed, an analyst at the Democracy Policy Network, argues in a blog post summarizing the program that this will help subsidize the sort of investigative work that local outlets can barely afford to do anymore. SpotlightDC, a nonprofit founded by a collection of prominent local journalists, has tried to ameliorate this sort of problem as well, but even that organization requires writing applications for specific stories, not any sort of dedicated funding that outlets can count on.

Histed hopes the program will encourage news outlets to pursue the sort of stories that readers want (and earn their vouchers in the process) instead of depending on the whims of advertising or social media, considering that disruptions in both industries have been key to decimating local journalism, in particular. “It was like a steady parade of D.C. types just coming in, paying in cash for their classified ads. You could see the money rolling in through the front door,” reflected former City Paper editor turned Washington Post columnist Erik Wemple when DCist interviewed him about this very publication’s cutbacks a year ago. Though online advertising still provides the bulk of funding for free outlets like City Paper, the days of reliable, abundant local ad revenue are in the past. 

Big, established outlets like the Post can rely on subscribers to fund their operations, but that requires keeping news behind a paywall (and, notably, Lewis George’s bill would require any outlet receiving funding to make local news available to all, alongside other financial reporting requirements). But even this model isn’t perfect, as the Post is on the verge of steep cutbacks set to particularly impact its local desk. 

Some organizations have experimented with a more nonprofit or public media approach, as DCist opted for when its backers turned to WAMU to resurrect the site in 2018. These sites often rely on voluntary donors for additional funding (as does City Paper via its membership program) but this model, too, has hardly been perfect. NPR as a whole has seen financial challenges broadly, as has WAMU specifically—notice that the outlet has yet to even post job openings after several prominent reporters left in recent months.

“For all these reasons—advertising precariousness, information pricing, incentives to serve the wealthy, and limited support for diverse voices—it is difficult for markets alone to sustain a vibrant journalism ecosystem,” Histed writes. “In today’s environment, entertainment media and misleading media can already sustain themselves, while in-depth local reporting typically cannot. A News Vouchers system will re-balance these scales.”

Is it a prudent use of government funding, you may wonder, to boost private companies with wealthy owners such as Jeff Bezos to City Paper’s own Mark Ein? It depends on who you ask, but an effort such as this could at least partially ensure that journalism isn’t so reliant on the whims of the rich and powerful. 

The bigger challenge for the bill will probably be overcoming more nuts-and-bolts political calculations than any high-minded debates about the Fourth Estate. In an increasingly constrained budget environment, it may be difficult for Lewis George to convince her colleagues that journalism is worth even a relatively modest investment such as this one, especially because some lawmakers in the city are probably perfectly content to watch local journalism wither away.

Many of the city’s politicians engage frequently with D.C.’s remaining local reporters, but plenty of others essentially pretend they don’t exist. That may offend the sensibilities of someone like LL, but it’s a reasonable enough political judgment. District politicos don’t have to rely on the media to reach their voters when they can use social media to do so directly, without any pesky questions from prying reporters. Mayor Muriel Bowser has been particularly adept at this tactic, but every politician does this at one time or another. 

Despite all the paeans to the value of local news, the descriptions of how it actually saves governments money by exposing corruption and waste, and the hosannas describing how it brings communities together and reduces political polarization, journalists are supposed to act as the adversaries of the city’s local politicians. It may be a bit optimistic to count on those same politicians to turn around and do them a favor.