SPECIAL: Should California Journalism Be Saved? The Tech Bros and Gavin Newsom Win
Published August 29, 2024
Photo of a homeless encampment in downtown Los Angeles across from the empty Times Mirror building with Metro bus passing by author (GoPro Hero 11 Black).
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By Zachary Ellison, Independent Journalist
I couldn’t help but agree, the Tech Bros and Gavin Newsom had clearly won! The lesser of two evils always prevailing, and the media critics couldn’t help but be surprised. I hadn’t really doubted the outcome even as hopes were high that a serious amount of money would be coming from the so-called “Tech Bros” as Los Angeles Times journalist Gustavo Arellano reminds us in his under-attended Tuesday night weekly Instagram Live session affectionately known as “Gritale a Guti.” Former Los Angeles Times journalist and President of Media Guild of the West Matt Pearce was quite irate at the failure of Assembly Bill 866, the California Journalism Preservation Act, targeted with an onslaught of advertising for failure. “Never Surrender to Tech Bros” has been drilled into my head with Arellano’s catchy intonation, but I was sure that in the end, one very important person would surrender no matter what, California Governor Gavin Newsom, a truly rich man.
It wasn’t just because Newsom, who reportedly is sour that Vice President Kamala Harris is the Democratic Party’s Presidential Nominee following President Joseph Biden doing what we had all mostly hoped, stepping aside for a younger generation. Rather, as readers who have followed my increasing interest in the soon-to-be termed out lame duck Governor, the ill-trodden path to Sacramento from Los Angeles, what some have even termed to be a “pipeline” simply wasn’t in favor of the largest county in the nation, with more population than forty states, and with no slight to San Diego, or our neighbors to the north, San Jose, Oakland, and San Francisco, this one is going to hurt. Not more than year plus or so since the Los Angeles Times had executed two major layoffs, those like Pearce were almost certain to take the “L” – the loss, with Pearce featured by Spectrum News journalist Kate Cagle standing across from the old Times Mirror building near City Hall saying, “Someone has to do journalism..Someone has to chase the mayor down the hall asking the hard questions."
To make a long story short, Google isn’t paying, and Meta isn’t going to be paying either. The Tech Bros are not going to come to journalism’s rescue, whether you have a newsroom or not, but especially not if you don’t. Pearce who accepted a buyout as part of the Times recent downsizing to my surprise joining us on Substack, itself having weathered intense criticism of its tolerance for right-wing fanaticism, even outright Nazism. In the end, as Cagle wrote: “the results of closed-door negotiations: a deal to provide $250 million in private and taxpayer funds to print and digital newsrooms over the next five years.” Most alarmingly as Cagle, a fellow University of Southern California alum described, “About $40 million of the money will go to an ‘AI Accelerator’ to assist businesses and the government to utilize artificial intelligence.” In the era of AI generated summary, whether in Google or laughingly in YouTube, it’s increasingly clear that journalism is not an art of accountability, but simply another product to consumers.
No doubt, Pearce, most certainly an idealist, a true believer that the Tech Bros could be tamed by sincere advocacy, much less our corporatized governor persuaded to make a hard choice of actually rejecting progressive legislation, wasn’t going to happen. Journalist Richard Tofel, a veteran of ProPublica, now also on Substack, wrote in his piece on the perceived loss, “Lessons from the California Journalism Legislative Debacle” that after threatening to cut-off California from Google News, the alleged monopoly had beaten the reformists firstly because journalists don’t naturally understand public policy, that “Our experience and expertise is in revealing its occasional corruption.” Secondly, because journalists are too invested in newspeak versus business puffery, that “this is the sort of puffery people in newsrooms make fun of every day,” and most importantly, if we succumb to corporatism, that “It might all be enough to make you wonder if the money on offer is really worth it.” The deal includes no money for local television stations or newsrooms grossing less than $100,000 per year.
Personally, I never expected a dime! Even as I’ve sought to cover at great time, effort and ultimately financial loss stories that I believe in, whether it’s USC’s implementation of Title IX reforms following the George Tyndall scandal or whether a major real estate developer putting out a slick book promoting himself and his bid to create Los Angeles’s largest homeless shelter, I’ve tended toward taking no prisoners. That’s not to mean, I only occasionally expose true corruption, but rather as Arellano has reminded me once, my reporting should seek to have some first person reporting, lived experience, in addition to mere commentary. If I have one or two regrets to date in a year and half plus of doing this, it’s an initial biographical error in relation to Jim Garrison (not the conspiracy theorist!), and in fact, a major donor to Governor Newsom well-connected through his influential son Sam Garrison at USC who in turn is a subordinate to Rick Caruso, the former mayoral candidate and political friend of Newsom.
If Governor Gavin Newsom can be said to have increasingly shied away from whatever liberal roots he had, and to have instead turned toward the proverbial dark side of Caruso-ism, a politics of convenience, his recent order to clear homeless encampments was a shining star. The author of his own book, Citizenville: How to Take the Town Square Digital and Reinvent Government, published in 2013, which I haven’t read. Newsom, as Los Angeles Times columnist Robin Abcarian summarized, without the use of AI while just a Lieutenant Governor, wrote that Newsom himself was once “a wonky talk show on Al Gore’s Current TV.” Moreover, Newsom’s book was “neither a political treatise nor a memoir” but instead, “it’s a look at how digital tools are changing the way citizens interact with government.” Then Lieutenant Governor Newsom of course used a ghostwriter, much like Izek Shomof whose book Dreams Don’t Die, I’ve sought to do a deep dive into that generated a lawsuit now on appeal.
To save journalism in California, we’re going to need to do more than just cost-cutting, outsourcing or conversion to artificial intelligence, rather I’d argue that we need to make news sexier again, to truly convince people that it’s worth reading because it’s the truth. The rise of disbelief in journalism, in government, and in the body politic at large is what’s read to the rise of Trumpism, Caruso-ism, and as Gustavo Arellano wrote in particular about J.D. Vance, who thankfully at least wrote his book on his own, a conveniencero, “someone who goes through life with no principles other than getting ahead, and no loyalty to a community other than his own.” To be fair, it’s unclear if Newsom ever really thought of himself as a journalist, much less a so-called “hillbilly” like J.D. Vance, and he was never going to do us any favors. I hear often that people won’t even pay for a subscription to the Los Angeles Times for Christ’s sake!
When I studied and worked for the University of Southern California, it was the New York Times that was contracted for distribution to the student body. Is it any surprise that literacy, much less news literacy in our society is now lacking? I recently heard the same is true in coffee shops in Portland, where I attended tiny, intellectual Reed College, which prides itself on having Steve Jobs dropout of it after inventing font. News organizations need to continue to work on distribution to consumers earlier in their lifespans as well as market reach. With all due respect to Patrick Soon-Shiong, the owner of our paper of record in Los Angeles who has invested many millions trying to save the publication, more of a plan is needed. I truly hope that this is taking place down in El Segundo, much less another round of layoffs will be on the horizon plus or minus the scandal with former editor Kevin Merida over alleged favoritism in news coverage.
Without actually changing their business model, newspapers aren’t going to succeed. That means adapting to using social media for greater distribution and planning to capitalize on it our front. Getting news to trend in a way that doesn’t just get the whole town talking, but also buying the news product is the challenge. At USC, for new capital programs and projects, there would always be a business model planned out. Perhaps what’s needed to save California journalism isn’t just legislation, but rather greater democracy. Whistleblower journalism must be more mainstreamed, and investigative journalism, including longer-term investigation needs greater investment to produce, regularly, and not just occasionally, the accountability bringing scandals that we all love to see! It’s not to say that hatred of the wealthy and powerful alone is the solution, but in a society on the brink, the real challenge is getting over the “who cares?” factor to create greater cultural relevency. There is not a single organization for whistleblowers in the State of California, I’ve taken to dreaming about creating that because it can move the dial in our society in addition to providing much needed protection and support.
California has 266,000 attorneys, with 190,000 on active status, and combined with New York, that’s “27% of the nation’s lawyers” according to Google’s AI Overview, which might as well be the new encyclopedia. By contrast, there were only 4,900 journalists, with a 68% decrease found by the Northwestern Medill School of Journalism in 2023. The number of people who scolded me for even considering a so-called “dying profession” was incredible! Still, I believe! And I do it for the stories, and for the possibility of truly changing something in Los Angeles, much less in greater society. In a land of unbelievers, becoming a journalist just might be the ultimate act of faith. So as the Trump campaign fumbles through its showdown with Harris, what I’ve taken to calling a match between Copmala and the Orange Menace, you have to wonder if anyone is really listening or reading. Is it simply that our society has become more capitalistic, or is it just becoming more brain dead?
Many people have intimated to me that journalism, much less writing in any form, is simply just another means of begging, a grift. They literally yell at me to stop describing myself as a journalist, much less talking about what journalism is supposed to mean in our society. For his part, Matt Pearce shouldn’t be without hope, but I wonder why he left the Times in the first place to go rogue for love of the union. Pearce recently put out an excellent piece entitled a “A reporter's guide to practicing self-defense in the newsroom” written from the Investigative Reporters and Editors conference in Anaheim. In brief, Pearce says #1 “Learn your rights,” #2 “Fight for ethics at the bargaining table,” and #3 “There’s strength in numbers.” I’m not sure if the Los Angeles Times staffers ever really contemplated going on strike to save those hundred plus jobs, but perhaps they should have, and undoubtedly more of a press to generate revenue would have made a difference. Instead, it went down in flames, with mass layoffs particularly decimating the diversity the newsroom had sought to gain, nor was there grounds for a lawsuit.
Registration for the conference started at $350 for an early bird, before scaling up to $425 for a regular transaction, and $475 on site. For freelancers barely making a dime, without other sizable means of income that’s a pretty penny. I’d have to sell 7 or 8 Substack subscriptions to begin to cover the cost, but for a lawyer, bringing in millions in recovery fees that’s a small slice of the pie. Perhaps, journalism should be looking to the professions it needs to hold most accountable for financial support instead of just the Tech Bros, because we already know, the Tech Bros don’t really care, even if we haven’t quite surrendered to them just yet. In a world of platform wars, perhaps the only true crime is not being fully silenced. People still look at me crazy for thinking there’s something weird going on with the LA Fed Tapes, that it’s more than just disgruntled employees, but rather the product of a political conspiracy, even as that’s the exact claim being made in defense of the alleged leakers from the embattled labor union.
The truth here may be scarier than fiction, even as the Los Angeles Times celebrated winning Pulitzer Prizes for their coverage, did their owner know the recordings were coming? The Watergate scandal may now be one for the history pages, but dirty politics are nothing new, much less in California, and the Los Angeles River is certainly no Potomac. So is Echo Park the new foggy bottom? If the allegation made in defense of the leakers, that the California Attorney General’s Office conspired with the Los Angeles Police Department to frame the two accused is true, will anyone even bother to intervene? The sad truth about corruption isn’t that it’s just occasionally revealed, but rather that it’s so embedded in our society that it simply becomes as routine as eating a pastrami sandwich at Langer’s next to MacArthur Park. No shocker that within days of complaining that he might close due to the failures of community safety in the troubled neighborhood, politicos including Mayor Karen Bass and DA Candidate Nathan Hochman, himself a 2022 contestant against California Attorney General Rob Bonta were down there for a sandwich and a picture quickly posted to X, formerly known as Twitter.
Legendary Los Angeles Times journalist Steve Lopez wrote about the practice of gangs in the neighborhood demanding payments for the right of doing business on the sidewalk. Lopez wrote quoting Norm Langer about his meeting with Mayor Bass: “I’m not an attorney…but it sounds like extortion to me, and it needs to be addressed immediately.” The news was no surprise to anyone whose read anything about the neighborhood related to MS-13, the dominant gang in the area, which has made news and presidential punchlines for years now. Of course there’s extortion in Los Angeles, except most of the time, no one really seems to care! The news was nothing new, and despite all optimism for journalism, the idea that we’re going to get out of this alive, much less without paying-off someone after a threat, seems kind of quaint. After all, live in the big city, in the state of California is challenging all of us not to be quitters. Giving up is easy, fighting on against all hope, and all odds at great sacrifice is more difficult of a proposition to stomach, whether someone is paying you grand sums of money or not.
Link: Gustavo Arellano's Weekly "Don't Get Beat"
Link: Big Tech is behind those creepy "oppose AB 886" ads in California
Link: Journalists question deal with Google to fund newsrooms
Link: Lessons from the California Journalism Legislative Debacle
Link: Gavin Newsom says the revolution will be digitized
Link: Column: I know what a true hillbilly is, and it’s not J.D. Vance
Link: L.A. Times to lay off at least 115 people in the newsroom
Link: Los Angeles Times Owner Clashed With Top Editor Over Unpublished Article
Link: Historic Demographics - California State Bar
Link: A reporter's guide to practicing self-defense in the newsroom
Link: Column: Langer’s Deli owner is starving for L.A. to clean up MacArthur Park, and thinking of closing
Link: Nathan Hochman Twitter Post RE: Langer's
Please support my work with your subscription, or for direct support, use Venmo, CashApp, PayPal, or Zelle using zachary.b.ellison@gmail.com
Zachary Ellison is an Independent Journalist and Whistleblower in the Los Angeles area. Zach was most recently employed by the University of Southern California, Office of the Provost, from October 2015 to August 2022 as an Executive Secretary and Administrative Assistant, supporting the Vice Provost for Academic Operations and the Vice Provost and Senior Advisor to the Provost, among others. Zach holds a Master’s in Public Administration and a Graduate Certificate in Sustainable Policy and Planning from the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy. While a student at USC, he worked for the USC Good Neighbors Campaign, including in their newsletter distributed university-wide. Zach completed his B.A. in History at Reed College, in Portland, Oregon, and was a writer, editor, and photographer for the Pasadena High School Chronicle. He was Barack Obama’s one-millionth online campaign contributor in 2008. Zach is a former AmeriCorps intern for Hawaii State Parks and worked for the City of Manhattan Beach Parks and Recreation. He is a trained civil process server, and enjoys weekends in the great outdoors.
