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State Sen. Steve Stadelman, D-Rockford, said in an effort to
address what he said is a shrinking local media landscape,
Illinois should pass the "Strengthening Community Media Act"
found in Senate Bill 3592. One element of the bill requires
120-day written notice to the Illinois Department of Commerce
and Economic Opportunity and the company's employees if a local
media outlet is looking to sell.
“Private equity firms are coming and buying newspapers,
consolidating them until they provide very little local news
content with no local journalist and sometimes those newsrooms
are shut down as what happened in southern Illinois not that
long ago,” Stadelmand said Wednesday.
State Sen. Jason Plummer, R-Edwardsville, argued the bill has
nothing to do with hedge funds and could actually backfire,
crippling local media.
A local media owner "has to go out and disclose to the world
four months in advance that he’s thinking about selling it. He
has to open up his employees and his advertisers to being
poached, and it destroys the value of his business,” Plummer
said.
Plummer said Stadelman’s bill doesn’t say anything about hedge
funds. Instead, he said, it could cause a media outlet to be
devalued.
“For that four months, when employees leave and advertisers
leave … the value of that property will go down. The value of
that business will go down. So our local media will be sold to
hedge funds at a cheaper price because of this piece of
legislation.”
The measure, which also creates a journalism scholarship program
through the Illinois Student Assistance Commission, can now be
sent to the Illinois House.
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