It’s no secret that the rise of tech platforms has roiled news publishers. Much has been written about what went wrong. Were news publishers a victim of their own inability to innovate? Maybe. Did tech platforms take advantage of rapidly growing user bases and a stagnant regulatory environment to engage in anti-competitive behaviors that effectively cornered the online advertising market, thus creating a wildly uneven playing field for publishers? We’re about to find out.
Tech giants Google and Facebook are now, in a big way, in the crosshairs of regulators, state attorneys general, and the Justice Department. The scrutiny now goes well beyond rumblings about Section 230. …
An incoming phone call on your landline would knock you offline. Netscape was the most used browser. Amazon was in its infancy and sold only books. Google, Facebook and Twitter had yet to spring into existence. In 1996, the internet was an entirely different animal than it is today. It was in 1996 that the Communications Decency Act was signed into law by President Bill Clinton. Contained in the law is a provision titled Section 230.
Section 230 laid the groundwork for much of the internet we know today. In a nutshell, Section 230 provides that, “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider,” the effect being that platforms, like Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and YouTube are largely protected from legal liability arising from content published by users. …
As Election Day nears, the stakes of this election are coming into sharper focus. For news organizations, this election, specifically election night represents a crucial moment for the institution of the press. In January of this year, it was clear that the presidential race and all of the associated down-ticket races across the country would be a rollercoaster. We did not know just how steep the drops would be.
We are now just a few short days from election day. The country has been ravaged by a pandemic that is still very much raging, the effects of which have flowed through every facet of life including our elections. …
Citizens across the United States are in the process of deciding which candidates have earned their votes for elected office, using the information available to them. Voters are being provided with more streams of information than ever before from campaign advertising to memes on Facebook to media coverage, and everything in between. Unfortunately when it comes to media, many voters only have access to cable news or national papers. While these outlets provide varying degrees of objective coverage, Americans have steadily lost trust in them. …
16th Century British statesman Edmund Burke was purported to have said on the floor of the House of Commons, “there were three Estates … but in the Reporters Gallery yonder, there sat a fourth Estate more important far than they all.” For Burke, the press served as a critical and indispensable check on government. Today, Edmund Burke would likely be disappointed to learn that some in power have taken quite the opposite view, unleashing a full assault on the press, labeling real news as fake and propping up fake news as, well, real. …
To say 2020 has been a tumultuous year would be an understatement. A global pandemic is ravaging public health and the economy, protests against racism and police brutality are gripping the nation, and our politics have become even more polarized. Much like cable news or newspapers, our digital world is both a source of information and a prism through which we view information. But what we have in the digital space isn’t quite so easily organized into neat boxes. What is a publisher? What is a platform? Are they really that different? Do they share common characteristics? …
Trouble in the local news industry has been smoldering for some time. The Coronavirus pandemic came along and doused it with gasoline, accelerating consolidation, cutbacks in coverage, sharp declines in advertising and in some cases, the shuttering of entire local news publications. If one takes a zoomed out view of the local news industry, the outlook looks pretty bleak. But, as the saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention.
The Coronavirus pandemic has laid bare the vulnerabilities of local news models while simultaneously demonstrating the very real need for local news. We’ve seen large local newspapers announce that they’re shifting coverage to national topics, claiming readers demand it. What’s more is, we’re seeing paywalls erected. Really, what’s actually happening is that large newspaper chains are searching for ways to reduce or eliminate the expense of covering local news while simultaneously attempting to increase revenue under the guise that paywalls will help pay for local news coverage. All of these moves create a product that isn’t quite local news and isn’t quite national news either (where there is already a lot of competition). …
It’s no secret. Local news has been on shaky ground for some time now — having disappeared entirely in some communities. The shift in how people consume information has led to a change in the economics of local news, exposing the cracks in legacy business models.
Readers shifted online, ad dollars became even more segmented and hard copy newspaper subscriptions began to decline. As a result, local news outlets had to figure out how to plug the holes. Some turned to events, others to e-commerce and still more sought to return to a subscription or membership model to support their news-gathering operations. …
Many of us never conceived of the world in which we are living today — a world under siege from a global pandemic. In times of profound fear and uncertainty, misinformation can run rampant. Having accurate information is essential to how we, as a society, respond to a crisis. Local news is often the only source of good information in our communities.
Unfortunately, as I’ve written extensively, local news has been disappearing from communities because of financial pressures on the industry. …
I believe that paywalls and most subscription models do not work for local news.
As local news outlets traverse the desert of reality, paywalls and subscription models are a cruel mirage promising to quench a thirst for revenue. These business models are really just repackaged digital versions of what print papers have been doing for a century. Many of the reasons legacy print outlets have struggled are the same reasons subscription models and paywalls won’t work long term — it costs too much for the reader.
Let’s say a local news subscription costs $5 a month. In isolation, it doesn’t seem like much. But then you add in Netflix and Hulu. Don’t forget Disney Plus. Throw in a subscription to the New York Times or Washington Post. …
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