NAPA
On Sunday, Rep. Mike Thompson (D-St. Helena) recognized Gilbert Rangel, Jr. as the 2023 American Dream Award recipient for Lake County. The American Dream Award is presented to California’s Fourth District residents who have come to the United States and made outstanding contributions to our communities.
“The contributions of people like Gilbert Rangel have made Lake County better and more inclusive for all who want to live in our region,” said Thompson. “Throughout his time in Lake County, he was worked to connect our communities and ensure that Spanish speakers received key information about wildfires. His dedication to Lake County and the immigrant community makes clear he is deserving of this award, and I am proud to recognize him with this honor.”
Mr. Rangel grew up in his family’s home in Guadalajara, Mexico. Mr. Rangel’s life has been a constant migration between California and Mexico, during which he has made significant contributions to his communities. Mr. Rangel began his career in San Joaquin County in migrant student educational services before being appointed by the Office of Governor Schwarzenegger to aid in the development of AmeriCorps in California. He continued his work under Governor Brown and was then recruited by the Lake County Office of Education to implement a local AmeriCorps program. Mr. Rangel serves as a Board Member for the Kelseyville Unified School District and as an advisor to the Middletown Arts Center. Mr. Rangel founded his company, Equilingual, in 2021 with the mission of achieving equity through language and supporting communications between local organizations and the Spanish speaking community.
The American Dream Award honors immigrants who have excelled professionally, through entrepreneurship and innovation, in the arts and culture, or through community service.
The full list of recipients from California’s Fourth District includes:
Gilbert Rangel, Jr. – Lake County
Rolando Herrera – Napa County
Madhulika Singh – Solano County
Jack Ding – Sonoma County
Dr. Anita Oberholster – Yolo County
—Submitted
SACRAMENTO
Media bill held for more study
Australia forced tech companies to share their advertising revenue with news outlets whose work appears on their platforms. Canada is following suit.
For now, California will not join them: Proponents hit pause on a similar measure last week in the face of fierce tech industry opposition, lingering legal questions and division among media organizations about whether it is the right approach to save a struggling journalism ecosystem.
Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, the Oakland Democrat carrying Assembly Bill 886, plans to hold the proposal in committee until next year as she considers additional changes that could not be completed ahead of a key legislative deadline this week.
She told CalMatters on Friday that she remains committed to providing a financial boost to California newsrooms that have been hollowed out by a collapse in revenue over the past two decades. Her bill would allow news outlets to enter arbitration with tech companies to set fees when their stories are displayed or linked to on sites like Google and Facebook, and require those media organizations to use the money primarily to pay journalists.
Wicks: “I want to make sure when I put this policy on the governor’s desk, it’s the right policy.”
She dismissed the tech industry’s sway in stalling her bill, noting that parent company Meta threatened to pull news from Facebook and Instagram a day before the Assembly overwhelmingly passed the measure last month in a bipartisan 55-6 vote.
Supporters — including the California News Publishers Association and the California Broadcasters Association, major news outlets such as the San Francisco Chronicle and the media workers union — argue tech companies should pay for the benefits they derive from the difficult and expensive newsgathering efforts of journalists.
But alongside an array of tech groups, some independent, nonprofit and ethnic media outlets have spoken out against the bill. During the Assembly floor vote, opponents repeatedly referenced a letter from CalMatters CEO Neil Chase, who argued the system would encourage “clickbait” stories and mainly benefit large publishers that could afford to pursue arbitration.
“I have no problem with government helping out journalism. It’s a public good that needs to be supported,” Chase said in an interview. “I don’t buy the premise that Google and Facebook have done something bad to journalism and need to be penalized for it. We have been running journalism with a business model that was invented by Benjamin Franklin.”
Chase said his position was not influenced by donations the nonprofit has previously received from Facebook and Google. CalMatters reporters also maintain editorial independence from Chase and funders.
Before she revives the bill next year, Wicks said she hopes to sort through those concerns about where the money goes and how it is spent, including ensuring that California journalists would benefit and small publications would have a seat at the table.
“I don’t want to enrich hedge funds,” she said. “Fundamentally, we all agree on the problem and that there needs to be a solution.”
—Lynn La, CALMatters
