Am I missing something here? A new law in California limits freelance journalists to writing 35 articles a year. I know a couple of freelancers and given the articles are paid by the word they write more pieces than that a month just to pay the bills. All I can see happening from this is an exodus of freelancers.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/everybody-is-freaking-freelance-writers-scramble-make-sense-new-california-law-1248195
California eh...? Bizarre... 
really?
AB5 is basically just a law (and wider than journalism) that stops employers misclassifying employees as self employed (so they can dodge their obligations)
More about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Assembly_Bill_5_(2019)
I suspect that there are going to be more problems with the law and the damage to the freelance journalism industry is only the first one to be realised. Anyone with even half a brain would be able to see that limiting the number of articles a freelancer is allowed to write is going to catastrophically impact their income so I can't imagine it is going to be the only way they have buggered it up.
if you're writing more than 35 articles for one publication you're not really a freelancer, you're an employee colluding with the employer to gain an unfair advantage over publications and writers that do it honestly
Did I mention that faux self employed fiddles make my blood boil? No one ever let me claim my cost of getting to work off my tax, no one ever let me pay a reduced stamp and still claim NHS care and a state pension, no one ever let me claim cost of my clothes as tax deductible expenses etc etc
