In the news: There are several proposed measures to rescue the ailing local news industry, including a proposed bill in the House of Representatives. But are there too many cooks in the kitchen?

“How many plans to save local journalism are too many?” asks a Poynter.org headline this week. Rick Edmonds discusses some of the proposals making the rounds. Of particular note is HR 7640, aka the Local Journalism Sustainability Act. The bill, which has bipartisan support in the House, would provide tax relief and credits to news organizations and subsidize small business advertising, Edmonds summarizes.

There are other bills in the works, including safe harbor bills in both chambers of Congress, Edmonds reports. However, nothing is set in stone, he warns: “Despite the flurry of interest, nothing will happen until after the election, possibly in November or December or more likely as a new Congress comes back in January. Then there will be the added challenge that local news may not rise to the top of a crowded agenda.” Read more here.

Also Notable

Covid-19 Hits Ad Industry

Advertisers are bracing for long-term hardship beyond the end of the pandemic. Although ad spending figures were better than expected this quarter, “the risks of extensive and long-lasting economic trauma are on the rise,” reports Seb Joseph of Digiday.com. Citing impending lockdowns in France and Germany, Joseph cautions that although we’ve seen recovery in the short term, the future is far from certain: “Media buyers [are] bracing for choppy economic climes and closely watching indicators -- namely, what happens to media prices should consumer spending remain in free fall.” Read more here.

Also Struggling: The News Industry

Newspapers have been hit hard by the current pandemic as well, as discussed in a recent Pew Research Center piece by Michael Barthel, Katerina Eva Matsa, and Kirsten Worden. The three writers discuss the Q2 numbers and other developments in the news industry. “Among the six publicly traded newspaper companies studied ... advertising revenue fell by a median of 42% year over year,” they report. The digital side is struggling as well: “Digital ad revenue fell by a median of 32% year over year in the second quarter.” Circulation revenue is down 8 percent as well. Read the full report here.

MarketWatch Adds Paywall

Popular finance and business site MarketWatch has added a paywall to its news content. Sara Guaglione of MediaPost.com reports that “a subscription to MarketWatch costs $1 for the first four weeks, then rises to $19.99 a month. It includes unlimited access across devices and platforms, member-exclusive content and fewer ads.” However, the paywall does not cover the entire site; Guaglione says that “much of the site will remain free, such as MarketWatch’s market data pages and the Virtual Stock Exchange.” Read more here.

Automation to Augment Journalism

Can bots and humans coexist in the newsroom? Sérgio Spagnuolo of the International Journalists’ Network thinks so. This week, he discusses how automation can relieve journalists of tasks that sap time from their actual reporting. He discusses how he was able to develop a Twitter bot and automate report delivery, while hiring a human community manager to oversee the process. “Automation in journalism is something that continues to raise quite a few eyebrows.... Journalists might (and should) be wary of the effects of automating every single aspect of a newsroom -- as Microsoft tried to do with MSN -- but the key thing I took from that experience is that automation is a great ally, not a standalone solution.” Read more about how automation can streamline things in the newsroom here.

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