OPINION
Permanent funding for local news may get a second bite at the apple.
New Jersey is expected to receive at least $525 million—and potentially more than $752 million—from Meta as part of the landmark settlement over harms caused by Facebook and Instagram. A substantial portion of those resources rightly should be used to address the direct harm to children and families.
There also is a compelling case for dedicating a portion of this extraordinary, one-time revenue to another problem closely connected to the dominance of social media: the collapse of reliable local news and civic information and the associated decline of social and community cohesion.
New Jersey has faced a similar opportunity before—and largely missed it. In 2017, under Governor Chris Christie, New Jersey received $331.95 million from the FCC sale of public television spectrum, the largest public-broadcasting spectrum payment in the country. Although legislation proposed using $100 million of those proceeds to establish what became the New Jersey Civic Information Consortium, the State ultimately transferred all but $10 million into the General Fund. In fact, the original draft of the legislation establishing the Consortium explicitly recognized that the spectrum proceeds presented an opportunity to strengthen public-interest journalism and civic information in underserved New Jersey communities.
Virginia made a different choice. Its Commonwealth Public Broadcasting Corporation received approximately $182 million from the same FCC spectrum auction and used the windfall to expand news and public-service programming and establish the Virginia Foundation for Public Media, creating a permanent institution designed to support public media for generations. As a result, Virginia ranks #19 nationally for local reporting capacity and New Jersey is at or near the very bottom. In the 2025 index, New Jersey ranked 49th out of 50 states, with only Nevada worse.
The consequences of underinvestment in New Jersey local news are increasingly visible. Northwestern’s Medill Local News Initiative identifies New Jersey among the states that have lost the largest percentage of their newspapers since 2005. Rutgers researchers found that more than 100 New Jersey local media outlets disappeared between 2020 and 2025 alone and, after analyzing more than 66,000 articles from 724 media outlets, documented substantial geographic disparities in coverage. Some New Jersey communities receive sustained reporting about government, schools and elections, while others receive little to none.
Every New Jerseyan deserves access to trusted, relevant local information, and research consistently shows the critical role local news plays in empowering communities and reducing wasteful local government spending. The 2026 Local News Index shows that robust local journalism is linked to greater trust, civic engagement, and coverage of essential topics like education and health. The Lenfest Institute further found that nonprofit local news organizations foster trust and civic participation, with many readers recalling how coverage personally impacted them. Meanwhile, news deserts face higher taxpayer costs, reduced government accountability, and increased loneliness. In New Jersey, insufficient local news costs us an estimated $9.6 million annually, underscoring that investing in strong local journalism is both a civic and economic imperative.
There is an especially powerful connection between social media and local journalism. When professional local news disappears, social media increasingly becomes its substitute. A 2026 Medill study found that 51% of daily news consumers in news deserts rely on non-journalistic sources such as social media groups, influencers, friends and family for local information; 42% use social-media news groups daily. Residents of communities with abundant local journalism also reported substantially greater trust in local news. In other words, strengthening local journalism is part of the solution to the hyper-partisan, vitriolic, and polarizing environment that platforms such as Facebook and Instagram have helped create.
The Meta settlement therefore offers New Jersey an extraordinary second chance. The State should dedicate a modest portion of the proceeds to NJCIC to create a permanent Local News and Civic Information Fund, at a time when recent Rutgers-Eagleton polling has found that 65% of New Jerseyans want to receive more local news. An investment as small as 5% of the total settlement for a foundation endowment, in addition to a dedicated revenue source providing a sustained yearly investment, could transform the State’s ability to address news deserts, support independent and community newsrooms, place reporters in underserved communities, expand civic-information tools, develop the next generation of journalists, and help existing news organizations become financially sustainable.
The harms caused by Facebook and Instagram to our young people go far beyond the formation of addictive behaviors. These platforms have fueled—and continue to fuel—a constant stream of often unreliable information for everyone, undermining not only mental health, but also the very fabric of our civic and community life.
New Jersey has the blueprint—and the warning. This time, by investing a small share of the Meta settlement into a permanent civic information fund, combined with a dedicated revenue source in the annual budget providing a sustained, recurring investment, the State can help reverse the decline of reliable local journalism, empower communities with trustworthy information, and foster a healthier, more resilient civic culture for the next generation. We cannot afford to let this second chance slip away.
Lisa Sahulka is Executive Director of the New Jersey Civic Information Consortium.
Editor’s note: New Jersey Globe Editor David Wildstein serves on the board of the New Jersey Civic Information Consortium.