Keep the lights on

Journalism Competition and Preservation Act needed for fair play and independent news

The newspaper industry is in a free-fall. Since 2005, more than one- fourth of U. S. newspapers have died; by 2025, one-third of them will be history. More than 30,000 reporters, editors, photographers and videographers have lost their jobs.

We don’t expect sympathy; many industries have suffered layoffs, steep job losses and pay cuts. But the decline of newspapers is affecting the entire society. Penelope Muse Abernathy, a visiting professor at Northwestern University, calls it “a crisis for our democracy and our society.”

That’s not hyperbole. Newspaper closings have made the nation less informed and more divided. So-called news deserts — mostly rural areas that aren’t served by a local newspaper — permit local governments to operate and spend taxpayer dollars without transparency and accountability. Without a local newspaper to shine a light, local school boards, city councils, police departments and sheriff’s offices can operate in virtual secrecy, and get away with incompetence, self-serving malfeasance and corruption.

Radio and television news departments, who are also struggling, can’t fill the gap.

There is no single cause for the industry’s decline, but there is a culprit: Giant digital platforms that rip off the news content of traditional media outlets and then reap the advertising benefits.

As newspapers like the Post-Gazette move from print to digital publishing, the advertising dollars they receive declines. Online, they compete with Google and Facebook, which have dominated digital advertising.

But here’s the rub: Those tech companies are also news aggregators. They freely take the news content dug up and reported by newspaper staff members and claim it as their own. “Steal” might be a better word — except that’s it’s all perfectly legal.

In the last two years, France and Australia have decided to level the playing field: They’ve enacted laws that require Google and Facebook to pay for the journalism they take from newspapers. Canada is considering similar laws.

In the United States, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D.-Minn., chairwoman of a Senate judiciary subcommittee on competition and consumer rights, has introduced the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act. Senator John Kennedy, R.-La., co-sponsored this bipartisan legislation to preserve strong, independent journalism by enabling media outlets to get fair compensation for the news content that giant tech companies profit from.

Now, U.S. newspapers can’t negotiate as a group due to anti-trust regulations. The bill would enable news organizations to jointly negotiate a fee structure for access to their content by Google, Facebook and other dominant platforms. Negotiations would be subject to final-offer arbitration, if they fail to produce a settlement after six months.

In September, members of the Senate Judiciary Committee voted, 15-7, to approve this bipartisan legislation. Now it’s up to the full U.S. Senate and House to approve the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act.

Democracy can’t function without an informed public. Without independent local journalism, public officials can operate in the dark. A level playing field between digital giants and traditional media outlets is needed to keep the lights on.