A $125M pact with Google to save local news may be slashed before distributing a penny

A CONTROVERSIAL $125 MILLION DEAL California struck with Google last year to prop up the state’s struggling journalism industry is already on track to shrink — before any of the money has been delivered to news outlets.

The deal, announced last August, committed California and Google to each put tens of millions of dollars into a fund to be distributed to local news outlets over five years. In exchange, lawmakers scrapped two ambitious proposals that sought to force the search engine behemoth and its tech counterparts to pay outlets for using their published content.