California lawmakers and Gov. Gavin Newsom jammed through a $322-billion budget last month. The biggest headline: Spending to provide healthcare for many undocumented immigrants went away. But there’s a nugget that you might have lost in the fine print: Taxpayers will fork out $15 million to hire, train and deploy dozens of journalists around the state. Yes, we’re all in the publishing business, together!
It’s actually been this way since 2023, when state Sen. Steve Glazer of the Bay Area town of Orinda secured $25 million to start the California Local News Fellowship program. That paid for the first three years of the program, and the hiring of about three dozen journalists in 2023 and again in 2024, and soon in 2025, to cover subjects like education, healthcare, the environment, social services and the criminal justice system. The new spending approved last week will create a fourth round of reporters in 2026 (each cohort is hired for two years) and launch a new program to help train news editors.