Free Press Action's Mike Rispoli Testifies Before the New Jersey State Senate on Behalf of Public Funding for Public Media

TRENTON, NJ — On Monday, Mike Rispoli, Free Press Action’s senior director of journalism and civic information, testified before New Jersey’s Senate Legislative Oversight Committee on the future of public media in the state. 

In September, NJ PBS — the state’s only public-television station — announced that it will cease operations in 2026. The move is related to Congress’ decision earlier this year to claw back $1.1 billion in funding from the previously approved federal budget for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the CPB’s subsequent decision to shut down operations. Previously the CPB had provided federal support for the operations and programming at hundreds of NPR and PBS affiliates across the country — including for NJ PBS. 

Free Press Action spearheaded the legislative and organizing campaign that led to the creation of the New Jersey Civic Information Consortium. The consortium provides state funding to address the most critical news-and-information gaps in New Jersey, especially in underserved communities, low-income communities and communities of color.  When the consortium was created in 2018, it was hailed nationally as a bold new concept for local journalism and civic engagement — placing New Jersey at the forefront of innovation in public media and local news while creating a funding model for other states to follow. 

Rispoli’s entire testimony follows:

Chairman Zwicker, members of the committee: Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. 

My name is Mike Rispoli, and I am a senior director at Free Press Action, a national, nonpartisan public-interest organization that was created to give people a voice in the crucial decisions that shape our media. One note: We are not affiliated in any way with the Bari Weiss-led media company with a similar name, The Free Press. Instead, Free Press Action is a nonprofit organization that for the past two decades has advocated for press freedom, local ownership, community-rooted journalism, and expanded funding for public media.

I myself am a proud New Jersey native and was a statehouse reporter for my hometown newspaper, The Asbury Park Press, and also worked as an editor at NJ Advance Media as well as a freelance journalist reporting on local governments in Middlesex, Morris, and Somerset counties. 

Alongside thousands of New Jersey residents, including many in this room, I helped lead the grassroots campaign to create the New Jersey Civic Information Consortium, a bipartisan, independent nonprofit that was created by the state in 2018 to invest public funds into local news and community information. I serve as a board member of the consortium and I want to thank the legislature for its continued support of this landmark initiative.

For the last 10 years in my role with Free Press Action, I have had the honor of listening to and speaking with residents in every corner of this state, people from across the political spectrum, from a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds, in rural communities and urban centers. And they all say the same thing: They need more, and better, high-quality local news in their community so they can navigate their daily lives and feel connected to their neighbors. 

In New Jersey, where local commercial broadcast media is in short supply, it must be said that policymakers should reaffirm and expand their decades-long commitment to the essential role that public broadcasting plays in the lives of their constituents. Public broadcasting provides free, accessible, high-quality news and information that fills a critical need for residents of this state that otherwise would not be met. 

That said, this moment also calls for a reexamination of what residents actually need from their public-media system, which is paid for by their tax dollars. 

The New Jersey Public Broadcasting Authority was established in 1968 to address “the inability of both commercial and public broadcasters to adequately cover public affairs in the State of New Jersey.” Today, the gaps that public broadcasting was created to fill have only widened. 

Without a doubt, broadcasting is an important medium; but the New Jersey media landscape is very different now than it was in 1968, possibly more fraught and fractured than ever. 

The elimination of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, funding cuts at the state level, as well as the decades-long decline of local commercial newspapers, has created a media environment where good information is hard to find and people’s newsfeeds are increasingly filled with hate, clickbait, and misinformation. 

The end result isn’t just the thousands of journalism jobs lost and dozens of newsroom closures  — it’s the countless communities that are left in the dark and don’t know what’s going on in their schools, whether their water is safe to drink, where their tax dollars are going, which local businesses are opening, and how to coordinate with their neighbors to solve problems. The research is clear: When local news declines or disappears, the effects on our communities are profound.

It’s because of this that New Jersey policymakers had the foresight to create the consortium, which builds upon the foundations of public media and invests public dollars into ensuring that people have access to local news that commercial media no longer, or never did, provide. This innovative effort is being replicated around the country, with at least five other states having implemented or looking to introduce similar public grantmaking models. 

The consortium has provided over $10 million in public funds for existing newsrooms and for an emerging crop of innovative initiatives led by media veterans, upstart reporters, and engaged community members. These local leaders are rising to the occasion and giving a voice to people who for a long time have felt neglected, misrepresented, or even harmed by legacy media.

While it may not look like public broadcasting, make no mistake: the statewide network of local news initiatives supported by the consortium are public media. They receive public dollars, fill in the void left by the commercial market, and provide public-interest and educational news that people would otherwise not receive. The consortium is helping build and fund the future of what public media will look like.

This is a moment to be bold. I urge this committee and policymakers to think expansively about what comes next, including how public broadcasting can be paired with public grantmaking to build a 21st-century public-media system that meets the needs of residents today. I encourage you all to take a holistic approach and invest in a more expansive vision of what public media is, what it does, and who it is for. 

Free Press Action and I stand ready to work together to make that happen and to ensure that whatever is created, it is rooted in providing New Jerseyans with public-interest news that they need and deserve.