In July the News Media Alliance, which represents almost 2,000 news outlets, asked Congress to allow it to negotiate with Google and Facebook. (Doing so without congressional approval would violate antitrust regulations.) David Chavern, president and CEO of the group, hopes tech and the media can come to agreements over “revenue sharing, data sharing, subscription support, and brand support.”

So far this year Alphabet has spent $13.6 million on lobbying, not a dime of which seems to be going to support Chavern’s cause. “I would be surprised if lobbyists for Google and Facebook would be supportive” of the alliance’s petition, he says. “I haven’t asked them.” Inquiries to two dozen lobbying groups that worked for Google in the quarter after the petition, and seven groups for Facebook, yielded little. “This has not come across my radar at all,” said one Google lobbyist who had heard of the petition, “and they’re not shy about things we need to work on.”

So one day in June I fly down to Phoenix to discover the future of local news. At the self-contained fiefdom that is the JW Marriott Desert Ridge, the Institute for Nonprofit News is holding its annual conference. This is some serious next-level journalistic nerdery. Editors and publishers from nonprofit news startups across the country are gathered to talk shop. Many in the industry think the future of local news is nonprofit. The conference feels like the dawn of … something. It’s surprisingly upbeat. As one attendee puts it, “It’s like being in television in 1947”—except without the promise of oodles of moola. While it’s true that the future of the East Bay Times and other local papers looks grim, maybe something here can save them.

That something might be found in the Grand Sonoran I room, where Josh Mabry and Dorrine Mendoza, representatives of the Facebook Journalism Project, give a presentation to journalists involved in nonprofit ventures. It mostly amounts to an Instant Articles sales pitch—using Facebook as a publisher for your content. During the Q&A, I ask the Facebook reps a version of the Miguel Helft question: Given that Facebook is one of two companies reaping nearly all new digital ad revenue, are there any considerations within the company to give some of that revenue back to content creators? A few people start clapping. Mabry seems slightly taken aback. He begins to talk about how great it is that his company allows publishers to collect ad money from videos on Facebook. He also mentions the revenue possible through branded content and sponsored content—essentially ads designed to look like they could be articles—on Facebook. The Q&A moves on.

Afterward I buttonhole Mabry to press him on how, exactly, local news providers—modest outfits like the East Bay Times—can take advantage of the opportunities Facebook provides. I suggest that videos and sponsored content provide substantial revenue only if a publisher is a New York Times, which has a team of professional videographers as well as T Brands, a studio staffed by people whose sole job is to create sponsored content. I posit that this formula won’t work for a vast majority of papers across the country. You don’t want your local health care reporter writing Merck ad copy. Nor is it very useful to have your city hall reporter taking shitty video of the Pumpkin Festival that nobody will watch by virtue of its very shittiness. He concedes that I do have a point. Then he starts talking about automated videos Facebook produces that wish you a happy birthday.

Cecily Burt, a Bay Area News Group editor in the East Bay Times office in Oakland. Erin Brethauer for WIRED Bay Area News Group is currently working to roll out a metered system in the coming weeks that will limit the number of articles nonsubscribers can see online. Erin Brethauer for WIRED

San Jose. Warm, springy day in August. Trees, leafy. Laptops in Starbucks a-taptaptapping away. Around the corner from Bay Area News Group HQ, Hank Coca’s Downtown Furniture store is having a sale. Everything up to 80 percent off! In April, Hank died. Now the shop he founded in 1957 is closing. Somehow the fate of Hank C’s Downtown Furniture seems not entirely unrelated to the state of the East Bay Times. Symptoms of the same malady.