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Journalism is the only specific profession mentioned in and protected by the U.S. Constitution.
The Founding Fathers understood an independent and free press is essential to democracy, transparency and accountability and civic engagement. The First Amendment protects the rights of journalists to inform the public without government interference. This protection ensures a free press can investigate, criticize, and report on matters of public interest, including government actions, without fear of censorship or retaliation, ensuring governmental transparency.
But press freedom is under attack, from the current administration’s efforts to restrict media access at the Pentagon by requiring journalists be accompanied by official escorts to California’s Assembly Bill 1821, currently in the state legislature, that would fundamentally alter the California Public Records Act, creating a governmental transparency crisis.
AB 1821, co-sponsored by the League of California Cities and backed by many municipalities, would allow state and local government agencies to charge hefty fees for public records, deem requests “not properly requested” and therefore invalid and delay responses even more than they already do.
For example, it took the Pleasanton Weekly more than a year to get public records from Pleasanton Unified School District to report on former Amador Valley High School principal Jonathan Fey’s resignation following allegations that he pursued intimate relationships with former students.
Even more alarming, AB 1821 allows agencies the ability to sue members of the public if they feel a request was made with “malicious intent”, which would be left wholly to the interpretation of whoever is holding the public records.
Fortunately, just before America’s 250th birthday, because of huge opposition, lawmakers removed the most dangerous provisions of the bill.
But the barrage of attacks on the free and independent press seem to come more frequently and put more at stake in recent years.
Perhaps these agencies are becoming emboldened by the current weakened state of news organizations because of economic hardship.
“Big Tech”, specifically Meta and Google, decimated journalism with decades of syphoning advertising revenue from publishers and creating “algorithmic dependency”, the reliance on algorithms and platforms to reach audiences. (As a sidenote, in 2024, Google exploited this dependency by threatening to ban news from its platforms in California when newsrooms in the state tried to get it to pay publishers for using their content, which would have further devastated news organizations.)
It should be no secret that DanvilleSanRamon.com is among those news organizations that are struggling financially. When the Danville Weekly launched in May 2005, the newsroom covered only Danville with three full-time reporters, mirroring its sister publication with three full-time reporters covering only Pleasanton. Through the years, residents of other Tri-Valley communities lobbied for us to bring the same credible, fact-based news to them, so the division expanded to include coverage of San Ramon, Livermore and Dublin.
Our newsroom now covers five communities with three full-time reporters. We know these communities deserve three reporters each.
In spite of this tall order, our Tri-Valley team earned a record number of awards in the 2025 California Journalism Awards contest, including first-places in Investigative Reporting, Enterprise Series, Columns, Editorial Comment, Best Newsletter, Sports Feature and General Excellence for the first time in our 26-year history.
The recognition by our peers is a true testament to all of our journalists but particularly our editors, who have to choose what our small staff can cover and how they cover it.
Picking and choosing coverage is, unfortunately, the norm for us and other news organizations.
The recently-released 2026 Local Journalist Index report, produced by Rebuild Local News and Muck Rack, revealed that the shortage of local journalists persists, with the national average now 7.8 Local Journalist Equivalents (LJEs) per 100,000 residents, a decrease of 81% from approximately 40 per 100,000 in 2002.
This downward trend in the number of journalists employed in the U.S. is accelerating; the 2025 report stated the national average of the equivalent number of LJEs was 8.2 per 100,000 residents.
This drastic decrease in the number of journalists indicates a significant collapse in local reporting. That means there are fewer people to sift through agendas, watch budgets, question decisions and dig through campaign finance records and court documents.
With fewer journalists, government overreach and political corruption surge, voter turnout decreases and, according to a 2020 report in The Journal of Financial Economics, government wages and municipal borrowing escalate, ultimately costing taxpayers money.
Locally, Alameda County falls below the national average, at 6.7 LJEs per 100,000 residents. Even more appalling, Contra Costa County averages 3.5 LJEs per 100,000 residents.
This is despite the wealth in these counties.
If you want to keep professional journalists employed in the Tri-Valley – and maybe even increase the number – please consider donating to DanvilleSanRamon.com.
Editor’s note: Gina Channell Wilcox has been the president and publisher of Embarcadero Media Foundation’s East Bay Division since 2006.
