Bill seeks to boost local news with 12 journalism fellowships

By Olivia Grant | UConn Jour­nal­ism
March 5, 2025

Jour­nal­ists may see more post-grad oppor­tu­ni­ties in the com­ing years as a new bill before the leg­is­la­ture seeks to estab­lish 12 jour­nal­ism fel­low­ships. 

The bill is one of five pro­posed this year aimed at sup­port­ing local jour­nal­ism. Rep. Kate Far­rar, D‑West Hart­ford, has spon­sored all of the bills as part of an effort to bring the decline of local news in Con­necti­cut to the atten­tion of the state leg­is­la­ture.  

House Bill 6076, An Act Fund­ing Jour­nal­ism Fel­low­ships for Grad­u­ates of Pub­lic Insti­tu­tions of High­er Edu­ca­tion, seeks to bol­ster local news out­lets by offer­ing recent col­lege grad­u­ates fel­low­ship oppor­tu­ni­ties in the state. Far­rar said in an inter­view that this bill, and sev­er­al of the oth­ers, were inspired by sim­i­lar leg­is­la­tion in New York and Illi­nois. 

Far­rar said the bill aims to make the con­nec­tion between recent grad­u­ates from pub­lic insti­tu­tions who have an inter­est in jour­nal­ism and local news­rooms who need reporters but may not be able to afford to hire one.  

Local jour­nal­ism in Con­necti­cut has been in a pro­longed peri­od of finan­cial chal­lenge that has result­ed in the clo­sure of some local papers, the con­sol­i­da­tion of oth­ers, and the shut­ter­ing of flag­ship news­rooms.

Bruce Put­ter­man, pub­lish­er and CEO of The Con­necti­cut Mir­ror, a non­prof­it online news out­let, said the fel­low­ship bill is part of a larg­er effort to get peo­ple think­ing about how the state can help local jour­nal­ism. 

 “The bill is pret­ty broad­ly stat­ed right now,” he said in an inter­view. “It’s essen­tial­ly a place­hold­er right now. It’s test­ing a con­cept, and if there’s inter­est, we can … get a lit­tle bit more spe­cif­ic.”

It also lacks a price tag. 

Far­rar said the bill’s lan­guage is unspe­cif­ic because it hasn’t yet made it out of the com­mit­tee it was pro­posed in. 

“We don’t know what the cost would be,” she said. “Like­ly if this bill gets vot­ed out of the High­er Edu­ca­tion Employ­ment Advance­ment Com­mit­tee, there would be a fis­cal note asso­ci­at­ed with it and then it would pro­ceed to the Appro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee for con­sid­er­a­tion.” 

A pub­lic hear­ing on the bill is set for 11 a.m. Fri­day, March 7. 

The fel­low­ship bill works in tan­dem with the oth­er four bills to bring atten­tion to the reduc­tion in local jour­nal­ism seen statewide and nation­al­ly, and to start the dis­cus­sion on how to pre­serve local news, Put­ter­man said. A coali­tion of local news pub­li­ca­tions, leg­is­la­tors and cit­i­zen groups work­ing on the mea­sures hope to use small­er, less con­tro­ver­sial bills to gar­ner sup­port for the more ambi­tious ones. 

Sen­ate Bill 1230, An Act Con­cern­ing the Pur­chase of Print and Dig­i­tal Adver­tis­ing by the State, is one of the more con­tro­ver­sial bills that again has been pro­posed this ses­sion. The bill would require that at least 50% of state adver­tis­ing bud­gets be spent with news orga­ni­za­tions based in Con­necti­cut.  

The bill stalled in the Sen­ate for the last two years because of con­cerns over jour­nal­is­tic integri­ty, an advertiser’s choice in ad place­ment and the exclu­sion of media chains such as Hearst Media, which is not based in the state, but owns many local news­rooms in Con­necti­cut.  

“So after it didn’t get called last year for a sec­ond year in a row, a num­ber of us got togeth­er and said, ‘OK, this doesn’t seem to be work­ing. What else can we do?’” Put­ter­man said. 

Along with the fel­low­ships idea, the fol­low­ing bills are what the coali­tion decid­ed on. 

• House Bill 5978 pro­pos­es tax cred­its for local news orga­ni­za­tions based on the num­ber of jour­nal­ists they employ, with a cap of $150,000 for each news orga­ni­za­tion. 
• House Bill 6038 would estab­lish a Local Jour­nal­ism Appre­ci­a­tion Day on the first Wednes­day of May each year.  
• House Bill 6418 would require news orga­ni­za­tions to give their employ­ees and com­mu­ni­ties 120 days’ notice before they can sell their news­room to a com­pa­ny that is based out of state. 

“I hope that the bills we put for­ward this year pro­vide dif­fer­ent solu­tions,” Far­rar said. “If folks have some con­cerns about one approach, hope­ful­ly they can be sup­port­ive of anoth­er.”

Put­ter­man said the debate isn’t over whether local jour­nal­ism is impor­tant, but rather the best way to sup­port it. All five bills aim to get leg­is­la­tors talk­ing about how they can sup­port news­rooms in Con­necti­cut. 

“We’re look­ing for sup­port for the impact that jour­nal­ism has. We’re look­ing for sup­port for stronger com­mu­ni­ties, more informed res­i­dents, less cor­rup­tion, greater gov­ern­ment account­abil­i­ty – all of which are achieved through jour­nal­ism,” Put­ter­man said.