Background Reading
Many journalists have covered this issue in different ways. If you want to understand the core issues that threaten modern journalism, these are good places to start.
A Serf on Google’s Farm
Josh Marshall, TPM
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/a-serf-on-googles-farm
It’s great that all this stuff is coming out. But what is more interesting to me than the instances of bullying are the more workaday and seemingly benign mechanisms of Google’s power. If you have extreme power, when things get dicey, you will tend to abuse that power. That’s not surprising. It’s human nature. What’s interesting and important is the nature of the power itself and what undergirds it. Don’t get me wrong. The abuses are very important. But extreme concentrations of power will almost always be abused. The temptations are too great. But what is the nature of the power itself?
Many people who know more than I do can describe different aspects of this story. But how Google affects and dominates the publishing industry is something I know very, very well because I’ve lived with it for more than a decade. To say I’ve “lived with it” makes it sound like a chronic disease or some huge burden. That would be a very incomplete, misleading picture. Google has directly or indirectly driven millions of dollars of revenue to TPM over more than a decade. Not only that, it’s provided services that are core parts of how we run TPM. So Google isn’t some kind of thralldom we’ve lived under. It’s ubiquitous. In many ways, it makes what we do possible.
What I’ve known for some time — but which became even more clear to me in my talk with Barry Lynn on Monday — is that few publishers really want to talk about the depths or mechanics of Google’s role in news publishing. Some of this is secrecy about proprietary information; most of it is that Google could destroy or profoundly damage most publications if it wanted to. So why rock the boat?
Facing Diminishing Ad Revenues, Digital Media Outlets Downsize and Consider Consolidation
Avi Bajpai, Media File DC
http://www.mediafiledc.com/facing-diminishing-ad-revenues-digital-media-outlets-downsize-and-consider-consolidation/
In 2014, BuzzFeed was the envy of the digital media landscape as print media was spiraling downwards and media companies were seeking to capitalize on web traffic and earn big from advertisement revenues.
At the time, BuzzFeed was drawing an average of 150 million visitors each month and had just secured $50 million in venture capital as the company was seeking to diversify its content beyond the numbered lists that had made it so massively popular.
Four years later, BuzzFeed had amassed a gargantuan 690 million monthly audience and developed the diverse content it had once envisioned, including BuzzFeed News, an impressive news division that has produced deeply sourced reporting, broken many important stories, and won some of journalism’s top awards.
However, financial hardships persisted. In 2017 revenue came in at roughly $260 million, falling $90 million short of BuzzFeed’s goal, and one hundred people were laid off.
How Will Google’s Move To Restrict Third-Party Cookies Affect Publishers?
Eric Barry, AdExchanger
https://adexchanger.com/the-sell-sider/how-will-googles-move-to-restrict-third-party-cookies-affect-publishers/
If publishers cannot monetize as they have previously, they could potentially move their content entirely behind paywalls or take a metered approach, leveraging tools such as Google’s Funding Choices or, potentially, Apple News. More publishers moving to a paywall, which historically has not been very viable, could potentially improve the appeal of Apple’s News subscription — which otherwise might be a fairly unattractive proposition — for both consumers and publishers.
About 1,300 U.S. communities have totally lost news coverage, UNC news desert study finds
Tom Stytes, Poynter
https://www.poynter.org/business-work/2018/about-1300-u-s-communities-have-totally-lost-news-coverage-unc-news-desert-study-finds/
It’s hardly a secret that news deserts are spreading, but just how bad is it?
A comprehensive new study released today by the University of North Carolina’s School of Media and Journalism shows that far more U.S. communities have totally lost news coverage — more than 1,300 — than previously known.
Top findings:
- About 20 percent of all metro and community newspapers in the United States — about 1,800 — have gone out of business or merged since 2004, when about 9,000 were being published.
- Hundreds more have scaled back coverage so much that they’ve become what the researchers call “ghost newspapers.” Almost all other newspapers still publishing have also scaled back, just less drastically.
- Online news sites, as well as some TV newsrooms and cable access channels, are working hard to keep local reporting alive, but these are taking root far more slowly than newspapers are dying. Hence the 1,300 communities that have lost all local coverage.
