It appears the big, old publishers have won. They cashed in their political capital — and with it no small store of professional ethics — to bribe tech companies into paying them for news. On their own and in their trade associations in Europe and the U.S., they lobbied politicians — in private and in their pages— for much protectionist regulation, legislation, and investigation against the big platforms. And it worked.
Facebook has said it will pay publishers for news; at their announcement, the internet industry’s bête noir, News Corp’s Robert Thomson, showed up to slather praise on Mark Zuckerberg and collect his envelope for Rupert Murdoch. And now Murdoch’s Journal says Google will follow suit and pay. We have a phrase for that these days: quid pro quo.
But their victory is pyrrhic. The industry’s houses are still on fire. They have no strategy for a new future, no blueprints for new homes; they are all but all bankrupt. With this win, I fear the dying incumbents will also succeed — for a time — in thwarting the entry of innovators who would replace them.
Google and Facebook made splashy public pledges that they would devote $300 million each to the future of news. In disclosure, I raised money for projects at my school out of some of those funds. Recently a renewal for a grant from one of them came in at a fraction of its former level, but I…
