• by Ray Schultz , July 19, 2022

Digital ads should be taxed to support journalism, a publishing advocate states. 

Lucia Walinchus, executive director at the nonprofit Eye on Ohio, the Ohio Center for Journalism, states that “a portion of revenue from all digital ads would go to journalists and be administered through a national nonprofit news utility,” in an interview with the Nieman Lab.

Walinchus continues, “Despite the fact that direct funding from the government might be easier, it runs into the problem of censorship. For example, what if a senator doesn’t like the coverage of him or her in a news outlet and tries to pull funding?” 

There is a model for this type of structure: “a portion of your cable bill goes to C-SPAN because C-SPAN helps us keep track of Congress,” Walinchus adds.

Walinchus concludes that this would “inject democracy back into the process. We could collectively decide on the standards for obtaining funding. For example, do the reporters have journalism degrees? Do they live and work in this community that they cover?”

It is not clear that advertisers would support such a tax, or that legislators would support it. But it does continue the critical discussion about ways to save local journalism.