California’s Largest Newspapers Get Greedy; Farewell to CBS Radio News–Coachella Valley Independent’s Indy Digest: May 25, 2026

Indy Digest: May 25, 2026

Danielle Coffey is the president and CEO of the News/Media Alliance. Formerly the Newspaper Association of America, the News/Media Alliance calls itself “the leading voice for the news and magazine media industries. Our advocacy, research and events bring together today’s brightest minds to create the strategies and business models to help quality journalism thrive.”

I am sure Danielle Coffey is a lovely person. I know that when she writes things like the Los Angeles Times commentary piece I’ll discuss here in a moment, she’s just doing her job, which is fighting for the interests of big-moneyed corporate newspapers like, well, the Los Angeles Times. (Check out the News/Media Alliance board of directors here; the members work for companies including McClatchy, Hearst Magazines, DallasNews Corporation, The New York Times, Newsday, USA Today—you get the drift.)

As pointed out by the California Independent News Alliance—a coalition of MUCH smaller news publications that are community-grounded, including the Independent—Coffey must do her job well, given that she’s generously compensated; according to the News/Media Allance’s 990, she earned $988,495 in salary and other compensation in 2024.

Now, here’s a link to that that aforementioned Los Angeles Times opinion piece. It’s regarding the California Civic Media Program, the result of a deal reached between Gov. Gavin Newsom and Google back in 2024.

To quickly summarize: A couple of pieces of legislation were heading through the state Legislature that would have forced Google and Meta to pay newspapers a LOT of money for “stealing” content (a claim I found dubious, but that’s a discussion for another time). Newsom wasn’t a fan of these pieces of legislation, so he instead reached a deal with Google to fund what would become the California Civic Media Program, co-funded by the state and Google. Newsom then promptly broke his promises by slashing the amount of state money going toward the program; Google followed suit by cutting their contribution; and the result is a $20 million pot of money that’s supposed to be divvied out to California news outlets sometime this year.

The Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development (GO-Biz) is in charge of distributing that $20 million, and is being advised on how to divvy it up by the nine-member Civic Media Program Advisory Board. California is a very large state, and $20 million is not a ton of cash, given how many news outlets there are in the state; as a result, this advisory board has had the almost-impossible job of coming up with ideas regarding “the approach and guidelines of the program.” One of the leading ideas is to award most of the money to outlets based on the number of full-time newsroom employees—perhaps $10,000 for each—with a cap of 20, to assure there’s enough money to go around.

Under this scenario, the billionaire-owned Los Angeles Times would get $200,000, but that is not enough for Coffey—even though, again, there’s a maximum of $20 million in the pot. No, she wants the Times to get a bigger chunk of that pot, at the expense of ethnic, community and hyperlocal outlets around the state.

She writes:

In a move that directly contradicts the requirement to provide funding based on the number of journalists a publication employs, the office is now proposing to cap the compensation any publication can receive at 20 journalists. Treating a newsroom with 20 journalists the same as a newsroom with 200 journalists makes no sense. Large publishers are no less vulnerable to the economic headwinds hurting the industry than smaller ones. If anything, their employees are more costly, as they often receive higher pay and better benefits than those of smaller publications.

This proposal would fail to support nearly a thousand California journalists, if not more, who work for larger employers. This will inevitably lead to job losses and a reduced ability to provide Californians with quality journalism. Publishers with more reporters are often the ones most able to conduct important in-depth investigative journalism, but that kind of journalism is expensive.

Coffey makes some great points—except for the fact that there’s only $20 million to divvy up here.

Julian Do, the co-director of American Community Media (a group that supports ethnic media outlets) is one of the nine Civic Media Program Advisory Board members. He wrote a piece in response to Coffey’s argument, pointing out:

Even with the GoBiz proposal to cap the headcount at 20 per outlet, the distribution would be weighted toward larger media. 

Evaluating newsrooms in this manner is staggeringly inefficient. A single grant that barely covers the salary and health benefits of one legacy reporter at a major metropolitan daily represents a transformative leap in reporting capacity for an ethnic or community newsroom. A direct, modest injection of capital enables in-language, hyperlocal publishers to hire reporters with the community connections and linguistic skills necessary to bridge coverage and trust gaps across the state.

To repeat, I know Danielle Coffey is just doing her job by speaking out on behalf of Gannett, McClatchy, the Los Angeles Times and the like. But her position reeks of greed—and disdain for California’s ethnic, community and hyperlocal news outlets.

—Jimmy Boegle

More News

• Law enforcement agencies consider automated license-plate readers (ALPRs) to be a valuable tool in investigations—but hoo boy, ALPRs bring with them all sorts of privacy-violation and misuse concerns. As a result, a bipartisan effort to end their use is being considered by Congress. Wired says: “The (House bill) amendment, obtained first by WIRED, is sponsored by Rep. Scott Perry, a Pennsylvania Republican and Freedom Caucus member, and Rep. ‘Chuy’ García, an Illinois progressive whose state has become a flash point in the national fight over ALPR misuse. The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee will mark up the underlying bill—a $580 billion, five-year reauthorization of federal surface transportation programs. … The amendment runs a single sentence: ‘A recipient of assistance under Title 23, United States Code, may not use automated license plate readers for any purpose other than tolling.’ The amendment is brief, but its reach would be vast. Title 23 funds roughly a quarter of all public road mileage in the US, including most state and county arteries and many city streets where ALPR cameras are becoming ubiquitous. Conditioning that funding on a ban of the technology would, in practical effect, force any state, county, or municipality that takes federal highway money (essentially all of them) to either remove the cameras or restructure their use around tolling alone.”

• The White House is requiring federal employees to download its new app onto their government-issued phones. Government Executive explains: “The White House recently unveiled a new app to give the public ‘unfiltered’ access to ‘key priorities,’ ‘historic moments’ and ‘policy breakthroughs.’ Now, it’s directing agencies to help install it on the government phones of federal employees. The Trump administration launched the app, which promises to ‘(keep) you connected to President Donald J. Trump and his administration like never before,’ in March. The push to install the app on the devices of millions of government employees drew surprise from current and former federal officials, who called the move highly unusual and even dangerous. In at least one agency, the automatic downloads will start next week in a move directed by the White House itself, according to internal communications obtained by Government Executive. … The move is ‘dangerous,’ Sonny Hashmi, a former longtime government IT executive, told Government Executive. Cybersecurity researchers warned about vulnerabilities in the app soon after it debuted, like how it shares the IP addresses, time zones and other data of users with third-party services. The app also raised initial concerns about its potential GPS tracking capability, but the White House has since removed that functionality.”

• Meanwhile, in Canada, a province is taking steps toward possibly declaring its independence. The Associated Press reports: “Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on Monday compared Alberta’s vote on whether to move toward independence to Brexit, calling it a potential ‘dangerous bluff.’ Danielle Smith, the premier of Canada’s oil-rich province of Alberta, said last week a vote would be held Oct. 19 on whether Alberta should stay in Canada or take legal steps under the Constitution to hold a binding referendum on leaving. Carney drew on his experience with Brexit in his comments. Carney was the governor of the Bank of England in 2016 when Britain voted to leave the European Union, and he helped navigate the central bank through it. ‘I saw firsthand what happened in the United Kingdom when the view was, “Vote for this, it’ll be soft and then we’ll negotiate, etc.,”’ Carney said. ‘They’re still 10 years later trying to undo what people didn’t think they were voting for, but what they ended up having.’”

• Today’s recall news involves … specialty beverage products! Newsweek explains what that means, exactly: “A nationwide recall of a variety of specialty beverage products has been issued after federal health officials warned they could be contaminated with salmonella, a bacteria capable of causing serious illness. The recall, announced by SKS Copack and published by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on May 23, affects powdered drink mixes distributed to cafés, restaurants, and consumers across the United States. While no illnesses had been reported at the time of the announcement, the scope of the recall—and the potential severity of Salmonella infections—has raised concern among public health officials. … The recall covers various specialty beverage powders and mixes sold under several brand names, including Angel Specialty Products, Royal Gold, Boba Time, Fanale and Denda.” The culprit: “contaminated nonfat dry milk powder supplied to the manufacturer.”

• And finally … so long to CBS Radio News. My first journalism job out of college was working at The Associated Press’ San Francisco bureau, and I spent my shifts listening to a mix of local and national news on “KCBS All News 74.” KCBS, by the way, is now airing national news from ABC, following the end of CBS Radio News on Friday. The Los Angeles Times says: “As a radio professional who grew up aspiring to work at CBS News Radio, anchor Steve Kathan understood the weight of the words he wrote and recorded Friday on the final broadcast of ‘World News Roundup.’ ‘America’s longest running newscast signs off for the last time,’ Kathan said in the small dimly lighted studio in the CBS Broadcast Center on Manhattan’s West Side. ‘It all began on March 13, 1938,’ he said, referring to the iconic news program. Kathan played a recording of Edward R. Murrow, the legendary CBS News journalist who delivered his first report on the debut of the program, saying ‘the best in radio reporting is yet to be—good night and good luck.’ ‘And goodbye,’ Kathan added, ending the run of around 23,000 editions of the 10-minute signature broadcast, delivered from CBS’ radio network . A final news update was scheduled to run later Friday night. CBS News Radio and its 26 employees became a victim of budget cuts across parent-company Paramount’s news division announced in March.”

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