California’s squandered opportunity

California is about to hand out $20 million — half from Google, half from the state — to news organizations, and it is wasting a golden opportunity. Instead of building a new and more competitive landscape of news, instead of creating services to benefit the entire news ecosystem, instead of investing in innovation, instead of embracing new news partners such as libraries and community organizations, instead of imagining a new future for journalism, the California Civic Media Program is going to end up sending too many checks to the hedge funds that have ruined news in the state. I am sorely disappointed and rather angry. For imagine what $20 million in one year could do to set an example of innovation for the nation. There’s much history here. Lobbyists for the old, hedge-fund-controlled newspaper industry — the rebranded American Newspaper Publishers Association of 1887 — have been flogging protectionist legislation from Washington to Springfield, Illinois, to Sacramento, arguing…