-

  1. Home
  2. Legislation
  3. Illinois Compiled Statutes
  4. -

BUSINESS TRANSACTIONS (815 ILCS 412/) Strengthening Community Media Act.

Back to Act Listing
Printer Friendly

Illinois Compiled Statutes (ILCS)

Updating the database of the Illinois Compiled Statutes (ILCS) is an ongoing process. Recent laws may not yet be included in the ILCS database, but they are found on this site as Public Acts soon after they become law. For information concerning the relationship between statutes and Public Acts, refer to the Guide.

Because the statute database is maintained primarily for legislative drafting purposes, statutory changes are sometimes included in the statute database before they take effect. If the source note at the end of a Section of the statutes includes a Public Act that has not yet taken effect, the version of the law that is currently in effect may have already been removed from the database and you should refer to that Public Act to see the changes made to the current law.


    (815 ILCS 412/1)
    Sec. 1. Short title. This Act may be cited as the Strengthening Community Media Act.
(Source: P.A. 103-1021, eff. 1-1-25.)

    (815 ILCS 412/5)
    Sec. 5. Findings.
    (a) Illinois benefits from robust local news services that provide trusted and essential information to the community that limits corruption, encourages citizen participation, helps combat misinformation, and mitigates community and individual alienation.
    (b) Local news in Illinois and throughout the country is struggling with newspaper advertising dropping 82% nationally since 2000, contributing to a 57% drop in the number of reporters at newspapers and thousands of closures.
    (c) Local news outlets are trusted sources of information for communities throughout Illinois and advertising spending with these outlets carries a substantial benefit for the effective dissemination of important government information to the communities it serves.
    (d) Government initiatives to increase spending on local news advertising has been manifestly successful in both supporting local news outlets and improving the information diet of communities in several major cities.
    (e) Illinois can and will implement such an initiative while preserving the editorial independence of local news outlets selling advertising space under this Act, and recognizes that any diversion of advertising spending that has the effect or appearance of an attempt to influence the editorial content of a local news organization violates the federal and State guarantees of freedom of the press and freedom of speech.
(Source: P.A. 103-1021, eff. 1-1-25.)

    (815 ILCS 412/10)
    Sec. 10. Definitions. As used in this Act:
    "Department" means the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity.
    "Local news organization" means an entity that:
        (1) engages professionals to create, edit, produce,
    
and distribute original content concerning matters of public interest, through reporting activities, including conducting interviews, observing current events, or analyzing documents or other information;
        (2) has at least one employee employed full-time for
    
30 hours a week or more dedicated to providing coverage of Illinois or local Illinois community news and living within 50 miles of the coverage area, who gathers, prepares, collects, photographs, writes, edits, reports, or publishes original local or State community news for dissemination to the local or State community;
        (3) in the case of print publications, has published
    
at least one print publication per month over the previous 12 months, and either holds a valid United States Postal Service periodical permit or has at least 25% of its content dedicated to local news;
        (4) in the case of digital-only entities, has
    
published one piece about the community per week over the previous 12 months and has at least 33% of its digital audience in Illinois, averaged over a 12-month period;
        (5) in the case of hybrid entities that that have
    
both print and digital outlets, meets the requirements in either paragraph (3) or (4) of this definition;
        (6) has disclosed in its print publication or on its
    
website its beneficial ownership or, in the case of a not-for-profit entity, its board of directors;
        (7) in the case of an entity that maintains tax
    
status under Section 501(c)(3) of the federal Internal Revenue Code, has declared the coverage of local or State news as the stated mission in its filings with the Internal Revenue Service; and
        (8) has not received more than 50% of its gross
    
receipts for the previous year from political action committees or other entities described in Section 527 of the federal Internal Revenue Code, or from an organization that maintains Section 501(c)(4) or 501(c)(6) status under the federal Internal Revenue Code.
(Source: P.A. 103-1021, eff. 1-1-25.)

    (815 ILCS 412/15)
    Sec. 15. Notice of sale of a local news organization. A local news organization shall not be sold to a company without giving written notice 120 days before the sales occurs to the following:
        (1) affected employees and representatives of
    
affected employees;
        (2) the Department and the county government in which
    
the local news organization is located; and
        (3) any in-State nonprofit organization in the
    
business of buying local news organizations.
(Source: P.A. 103-1021, eff. 1-1-25.)

    (815 ILCS 412/90)
    Sec. 90. (Amendatory provisions; text omitted).
(Source: P.A. 103-1021, eff. 1-1-25; text omitted.)