Cameron Joseph at The Columbia Journalism Review:
Now California lawmakers are seriously considering the California Journalism Preservation Act, a bill modeled on those countries’ laws with the aim of arresting and reversing the decline in local media. It would be the first of its kind in the US. (Similar legislation has been introduced in Congress but so far hasn’t gotten much traction.) The bill would force the big tech companies into an arbitration process with newsrooms, to establish a fee that the companies would pay to carry news articles. It passed the California State Assembly last July with broad bipartisan support. Its backers hope that after some modifications, it could become law later this year. Unsurprisingly, the bill has run into vocal opposition from Big Tech. Meta threatened to pull news from Facebook and Instagram in California if it becomes law. (The company carried through on this threat in Canada.) But the legislation also has faced criticism from some journalists and media experts, who worry that the bill as currently crafted could result in a payment scheme that encourages high-volume clickbait, and would disproportionately benefit larger newsrooms while doing little to help smaller ones.