But if California and Google still want to have independent journalists around — people who will report what’s going on in our communities, investigate corruption in local government and dig up hidden documents, even if just to feed an AI — somebody is going to have to pay us to do it. The California Journalism Preservation Act reasonably suggests that the people who profit from journalists’ work should help foot the bill.

Google’s decision to begin removing links to California news sites from search results not only threatens the economics of independent journalism, it also prevents citizens and communities from accessing essential news and information.

Google’s Friday announcement that it will test the removal of links to news sites for some California users is a shameful attempt to fend off legislation that would force the search giant to pay for the news content that fuels its business.

Californians may find their Google results bereft of local news links Friday morning as the search giant escalates its fight against a landmark state bill aimed at forcing tech giants to pay online publishers.

“Google removing news is undemocratic and antithetical to open access to information,” Danielle Coffey, president and CEO of News/Media Alliance, said regarding Google’s actions Friday. “Its power move with the government is a symptom of a larger problem: the dominance and market power of a single company. The need for the California Journalism Preservation Act could not be more clear.”

One of the major reasons for newspapers’ eroding financial position is that tech giants Google and Meta control what gets viewed, and collect ad revenue to be that gatekeeper. And now with the newest search results being bolstered by AI, Google increasingly doesn’t even send users off its own site. They have harvested billions in advertising revenue, and have never paid any money to the journalists who create the content.

Journalism is the lifeblood of democratic engagement, yet we have allowed the decimation of local news to continue at a furious pace.

For more than a decade, tech giants built the world’s most valuable companies off the backs of journalists while siphoning off revenue from news publishers by creating digital advertising monopolies.

Every day, what’s left of the once-mighty ranks of reporters across this country tap out stories meant to inform, entertain and expose.

Sometimes they are the work of minutes, the first bits of knowledge on breaking news such as fires, storms or even elections. Sometimes they are investigations that have taken years.

Mass layoffs at the Los Angeles Times on Tuesday and steep cuts at other news organizations are spurring renewed interest in a California bill that would force Google, Facebook and other large platforms to pay journalists.

The bill stalled in the Legislature last year amid stiff opposition from the tech companies it targeted, but its author, Assembly Member Buffy Wicks, plans to try again this year to push it through. The bill is still alive and is a “top priority” for Wicks this year, said Erin Ivie, a spokesperson for the Oakland Democrat.

It may seem overly dramatic to say that democracy hangs in the balance, but it does.

The local news business has been struggling for well over a decade as search engines and social media have siphoned audience and revenue away from traditional publishers by redistributing the content of those publishers and selling their own advertising against that content.

That’s not fair, and it’s definitely not fair use.w