Senate Bill 1580: What it Is and How it Could Impact the Quest
On February 11, 2026, the Oregon State Legislature held a public hearing on the newly-proposed Oregon Senate Bill 1580 (SB 1580), which has Senator Khanh Pham, Representative David Gomberg, Senator Sara Gelser Blouin, and Senator James I. Manning Jr. as its chief sponsors. The bill aims to prohibit large online news aggregation platforms such as Google and Meta from “accessing for an Oregon audience the online content of a digital journalism provider without an agreement.”
The bill is motivated to support “the ability of local news organizations to continue to provide the public with critical information about their communities” while “enabling publishers to receive fair market value for their content that is monetized by platforms” as stated in its preamble. It also notes that “two major technology platform companies, Google and Meta, currently crawl Oregon publishers’ news content and are being prosecuted by the federal government on allegations of operating as anticompetitive monopolies in violation of the federal Sherman Act.” It also mentions in its preamble that “18 Oregon news outlets closed or went out of business between the years 2022 and 2025, and other Oregon news outlets have undergone corporate mergers, budget cuts and layoffs in newsrooms.”
The crux of the bill is section two, which states that a “covered platform may not access for an Oregon audience the online content of a digital journalism provider unless the covered platform and digital journalism provider have an agreement that meets the requirements of subsection (2) of this section and the covered platform is in compliance with the agreement.” Agreements must be in writing, cover compensation at a set rate, and “prohibit the covered platform from selling or licensing to a third party.”
In section one, clause five of the bill, it defines a “covered platform” as any online platform with over 50 million monthly U.S. users that is owned or controlled by a parent corporation with over $550 billion in market value or has over 1 billion global users. In correspondence with Senator Pham’s Chief of Staff Rev. Joseph Santos-Lyons, he explained that in practice, the bill “targets companies like Google and Meta—not student newspapers or small outlets.”
The bill also defines a “Digital Journalism Provider” in section 1 clause 6 as a “publisher or broadcaster that publicly discloses its ownership.” Public disclosure, according to Santos-Lyons, “means that the outlet clearly identifies who owns or governs it.” A “publisher” must be an informative organization in operation for the past two years, be “a public information function comparable to that traditionally served by newspapers and other periodical news publications.” A publisher must also engage with professionals who gather information through methods including “conducting interviews, observing current events, analyzing documents and other information or fact-checking through multiple firsthand or secondhand news sources,” update its content weekly, and have an editorial process. It must also either have generated $100,000 in revenue in the past year, have an International Standard Serial Number assigned an “affiliated periodical,” or be “owned and controlled by” a 501(c)(3) organization, which applies to Reed.
Section 3 of the bill describes the civil action and arbitration process digital journalism providers may bring against covered platforms that do not comply with section 2, and explains how “The digital journalism provider may recover actual damages or statutory damages of $1,000 per access that the covered platform carried out in violation of section 2 of this 2026 Act, whichever is greater” and also states that “A covered platform that pays an amount under this section shall distribute 10 percent of the amount the covered platform pays to the Oregon Civic Information Consortium established under section 12 of this 2026 Act.”
The bill establishes a new entity: the Oregon Civic Information Consortium, a nonprofit with the purpose “to provide grants described in section 14 of this 2026 Act to support Oregon news content providers, journalism, news, public information projects and public interest initiatives that address Oregonians’ civic information needs. The consortium shall be a collaborative effort among Oregon journalistic publications, news outlets, member universities and nonprofit and community organizations.” It may provide grants for projects that “(a) Serve the public interest, improve civic information and increase availability of local news content in this state; (b) Enhance the quality and availability of timely, reliable local news and support local reporting and investigative journalism; (c) Address underserved areas, meet the information needs of low-income or racial, ethnic or language minority communities and provide culturally specific and multilingual content; (d) Develop stronger journalism networks through shared practices and partnerships, support training of journalism students and working professionals and support job creation and career advancement opportunities related to local journalism; and (e) Other related goals as determined by the consortium’s board of directors.”
The bill hasn’t yet been passed and has been met with both praise and criticism towards its efforts, shared in the form of written testimony available online since the bill was proposed on the Oregon Senate floor on February 11. Among the 88 testimonies, two were neutral and 27 were opposed to the bill, leaving a clean two-thirds majority of writers in favor of SB 1580 passing.
Among the testimonies in opposition to the bill, a common sentiment is that platforms like Google and Meta help drive traffic by taking and linking articles from other, smaller entities. Dr. Edward Longe, on behalf of conservative think tank The James Madison Institute, which is based in Tallahassee, Florida, claims that “hyperlinks are not theft, they’re free marketing for local news outlets.” David Sommers, on behalf of the Oregon Independent News Network, shares Longe’s sentiment. Sommers further points out that “Meta still does not allow news links on their sites in Canada because of their bargaining code law,” worrying that a similar result may occur in Oregon that would adversely affect independent publishers. On behalf of Newsberg, Branden Anderson argues that “the bill is heavily weighted toward benefitting large, legacy publishers, with insufficient consideration for the realities of independent, locally owned newsrooms.” Unlike most opposed writers, Anderson does not disagree with the sentiment of the bill, but thinks that it fails to target the audience of “small, rural, and underserved community newsrooms” that would most benefit from the bill’s proposed changes.
Despite potential concerns, writers who gave testimony were still overwhelmingly in favor of the bill’s passage. Among them, Bob Singer, on behalf of the Oregon Association of Broadcasters, states that the bill “directly addresses the growing imbalance between local news producers and large digital technology platforms” that use the content of other broadcasters without appropriate compensation. Scott Swanson, on behalf of Oregonian newspaper The New Era, states that “[The paper] has lost significant advertising dollars in recent decades to online media… and now we have local news content appropriated by AI and other scraping mechanisms.” Swanson argues that compensation at the local level should be enough to account for a potential reduction in readership caused by the bill, if there is one at all. As stated by Heidi Wright, on behalf of the Oregon Fund for Local Journalism, the bill “is not perfect, [but] represents a meaningful effort to respond to a market failure that disproportionately harms independent and community-based news organizations,” suggesting that despite concerns about the bill’s effectiveness, it may still be a step in the right direction for protecting news providers in Oregon.
Santos-Lyons stated that “Based on how the bill defines a ‘Digital Journalism Provider,’ it is very likely that the Quest could qualify for participation in the consortium,” and elaborated on the key criteria for participation. Despite being funded by a 501(c)(3), the Quest would not be disqualified from participation in the Consortium due to its focus on “producing original journalism, serving a defined audience, and operating independently in editorial decision-making,” according to Santos-Lyons. He also clarified that the requirement that a would-be participant “publicly discloses its ownership” requires little more than clear identification available on their website, such as a disclosure that the paper is owned and published by a specific media organization, foundation, or board. “The goal is transparency, not a particular ownership model,” he stated.
Santos-Lyons also acknowledged that Meta reacted to Canada’s bargaining code law by blocking news links. However, he noted that “[Meta’s] retaliation had significant impacts” such as “political, reputational, and market consequences” that are now leading them to “[actively explore] re-engagement pathways in Canada.” Santos-Lyons stated that “The Oregon proposal is designed with lessons from Canada in mind,” pointing out that the consortium model and state-level coordination is directly intended to “reduce fragmentation and strengthen negotiating leverage.