Google, the State Make a Deal on Funding Journalism; New COVID-19 Shots Are on Their Way–Coachella Valley Independent’s Indy Digest: Aug. 22, 2024

Indy Digest: Aug. 22, 2024

At the end of our recent story about the battle over the proposed Prescott Preserve in Palm Springs, there’s a quote from Shaun Murphy, the attorney representing Mesquite Country Club residents, regarding a possible compromise with the Oswit Land Trust.

“A good settlement is one where nobody’s happy, right?” Murphy said.

If the key to a good settlement is nobody being happy, the agreement between Google and the state of California regarding journalism funding is indeed a good settlement—because a whole lot of people are unhappy with it.

Here’s how the Los Angeles Times described the agreement between Google and the state of California:

“The plan lays out a commitment of nearly $250 million over the next five years, with just over one-fourth of the money coming from state taxpayers and the remainder coming from Google and possibly other private donors. The money will go toward two new initiatives administered by UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism: a fund to distribute millions of dollars to California news outlets, and an ‘AI accelerator’ to develop ways for journalists to use the powerful technology. …

As part of the agreement, the state will put $30 million from next year’s budget into the fund, and contribute $10 million in each of the next four years. Google will put $15 million into the fund next year, and pay another $15 million next year to support other journalism initiatives: $5 million for the AI accelerator and $10 million in direct donations to digital news outlets. In each of the next four years, Google commitments include putting $10 million into the new fund and continuing $10 million in direct donations to news outlets.”

Many legislators, newsroom unions and publishers are expressing disappointment and even anger over this deal, saying Google and other tech companies are getting off way too easy. Others, like the California News Publishers Association, are offering tepid endorsements of the deal. A few parties seem genuinely satisfied with it—such as Google and Gov. Gavin Newsom (whose involvement hints that he may not have signed Assembly Bill 886, the so-called California Journalism Preservation Act, or Senate Bill 1327, a bill that would have taxed Amazon, Meta and Google to fund journalism, had they been set to his desk). The Local Independent Online News Publishers encouraged California members—including the Independent—to write Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, the sponsor of AB 886, expressing support for the framework of the deal. I did indeed write such a letter.

Why did I express support for the framework? Three reasons.

• The things in this agreement will almost certainly come to be. AB 886 or SB 1327 could have been vetoed or delayed for years in court.

• As I’ve mentioned before in this space: AB 886, while undeniably well-intentioned, would have been a big giveaway to truly terrible companies like Gannett (the parent company of The Desert Sun), the Alden Global Capital hedge fund (owner of the dailies in San Diego, San Bernardino, Riverside, Orange County, San Jose and others) and the Chatham Asset Management hedge fund (owner of the dailies in Sacramento, Fresno, Modesto and others). While AB 886 had a requirement that 70 percent of the funds be spent on journalists and support staff, I have no doubt these companies—which have proven time and again that they’re concerned about maximizing short-term profits, not journalism—would have found ways to NOT spend much of that money on journalism.

• As I have also mentioned before in this space: Big tech does not deserve much of the blame for newspapers’ woes. How is linking to news stories and selling ads around those search results “theft”? While Google and Facebook were creating innovative products around which to sell advertising (albeit in apparent violation of antitrust laws, in Google’s case), the aforementioned terrible newspaper companies and their precursors were worried more about maintaining huge profit margins than investing in their products.

Will this agreement save journalism in California? No. Will it help a lot of news publishers, particularly smaller ones like the Independent? Yes. Is this a huge giveaway to terrible, awful hedge funds? Thank goodness, no. So I am happy with this deal … kinda.

Is this battle over? Definitely not.

—Jimmy Boegle

More News

• As expected, the Food and Drug Administration has approved this year’s updated COVID-19 shots—and they should be available within days. CNBC says: “The jabs target a strain called KP.2, a descendant of the highly contagious omicron subvariant JN.1 that began circulating widely in the U.S. earlier this year. KP.2 was the dominant COVID strain in May, but now only accounts for roughly 3% of all U.S. cases. … Still, Pfizer and Moderna have said their KP.2 vaccines can produce stronger immune responses against other circulating subvariants of JN.1, such as KP.3 and LB.1, than last year’s round of shots targeting the omicron strain XBB.1.5 can. … In June, the CDC recommended that everyone over 6 months old receive an updated COVID vaccine and flu jab this year. The new shots from Pfizer and Moderna are specifically approved for people ages 12 and older and are authorized under emergency use for children 6 months through 11 years old.”

• The Calmatters headline says: “Taxpayers cover tuition at California’s for-profit schools. The results? Low-wage, high-turnover jobs.” Yikes. The lede: “Kiana Munoz didn’t have much time. She had a baby to care for and needed to earn money after just graduating from high school. When she saw that Premiere Career College, a for-profit school in Los Angeles County, promoted its ability to help her get a job as a medical assistant, she enrolled. But after graduating, she couldn’t find work. She said she spent months searching for a job at doctors’ offices, but eventually gave up and started working at Sears instead. More than six years later, she said she still owes the college more than $5,500. In 2022, California spent nearly $61 million of taxpayer dollars from the federal Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act to support job training, typically for low-income and unemployed adults, according to the most recent data available. It’s one of the largest job training programs in California—designed by the federal government to prepare students for high-quality jobs. The reality is far different.”

• The Conversation investigates the problems with gift cards—specifically, they they’re basically unregulated and are often used in schemes to defraud people, usually vulnerable seniors: “An estimated $8 billion is stolen annually from seniors age 60 and older through stranger-perpetrated frauds, according to AARP. Increasingly, gift cards are a leading fraud payment method reported by older adults, according to the Federal Trade Commission. … (Our) investigation shows that federal regulators have consistently failed to protect the public from gift card fraud and have failed to give gift cards consumer protections like those afforded to credit and debit cards. Congress, in turn, has largely deferred to these regulators. Meanwhile, efforts to rein in the industry on the state and federal level have been met with successful opposition from lobbyists and gift card trade groups. When fraud does occur, gift card retailers are often less than helpful in assisting law enforcement in helping to track down the criminals.”

Today’s recall news involves … BMWs! USA Today reports: “The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) issued a recall notification for over 720,000 BMW vehicles over a water pump malfunction that may cause a fire. BMW is recalling 720,796 of its 2012-2018 vehicles. Some of the recalled vehicles include the BMW X1, X3, X4 and X5. In the NHTSA report released on Aug. 19, the luxury vehicle company said, ‘an improperly sealed electrical connector on the water pump may be exposed to water and short circuit.’ An electrical short increases the risk of a fire, the NHTSA report said. To fix the issue, BMW dealers will inspect and replace the water pump and plug connector as necessary and install a protective shield for free. Recall notification letters are expected to be sent on Oct. 4.”

• This is also recall-related, but I am mostly sharing because The New York Times headline made me chuckle: “Can High Prices and Health Scares Keep Americans From Their Deli Meat?” Some explanation about what in the world the headline writer means: “In late July, just as parents were starting to decide what to pack in school lunches, Boar’s Head recalled more than seven million pounds of ham, salami and other products after its liverwurst was linked to a deadly listeria outbreak. That’s enough cold cuts to fill 161 semi trucks. Last Thursday, lunch meat became a political prop when it made a cameo appearance on a table of groceries laid out alongside Donald J. Trump as he delivered a speech complaining about the high cost of food. … As if on cue, deli-meat sales dropped by almost 8 percent the week the recall was announced, which ‘in the grand scheme of things is very mild,’ said Anne-Marie Roerink, president of the food research company 210 Analytics. Since they peaked during the pandemic era, lunch-meat sales as a whole have been soft. In the year ending in June, they dropped 2.4 percent. But never bet against lunch meat. A staple that made its American debut at German-Jewish delis in the 1850s is now a $16 billion-a-year business that seems to navigate challenges and changes—whether warnings about links to cancer and heart disease, or sudden fads like the charcuterie board—with equal aplomb.”

• And finally … here’s yet another disconcerting story about the affects of climate change, from CNN: “Fishermen and scientists were alarmed when billions of crabs vanished from the Bering Sea near Alaska in 2022. It wasn’t overfishing, scientists explained—it was likely the shockingly warm water that sent the crabs’ metabolism into overdrive and starved them to death. But their horrific demise appears to be just one impact of the massive transition unfolding in the region, scientists reported in a new study released Wednesday: Parts of the Bering Sea are literally becoming less Arctic. The research from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found warmer, ice-free conditions in the southeast Bering Sea—the kind of conditions found in sub-Arctic regions—are roughly 200 times more likely now than before humans began burning planet-warming fossil fuels.”

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