This excellent article https://nmc-mic.ca/2021/07/19/op-ed-...playing-field/ explains clearly why journalism and newspapers are struggling to survive and why. It is using the Canadian scenario but applies around the world.
"Around the world, there is growing consensus that the dominant power of Big Tech must be reined in to prevent market failures.
In late June, Congressman David Cicilline, who chairs the Antitrust Subcommittee in the U.S. House of Representatives said, “Today, we have sent a clear message. The United States will no longer let other countries lead the fight against unregulated monopoly power.”
These market failures are having an impact on journalism, where the platforms divert about 80 per cent of advertising revenue from Canadian publishers. A U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation report found, “Although local journalism has faced numerous challenges adapting to the new media landscape, they are also confronting unfair practices by some of the largest technology companies in the world.”
Around the same time, Denmark became the first country in Europe to have media outlets come together to form a collective bargaining organization to negotiate with Google and Facebook. This approach is modelled on the music industry, where musicians can negotiate collectively with streaming services, such as Spotify.
Simply put, the Danish publishers are seeking fair value for the platforms use of content produced by their journalists. This approach seeks to end the ‘divide and conquer approach’ favoured by the platforms, whereby they negotiate with dominant players to set the standard for others to follow – something that does not benefit smaller publishers.
This week, the French Competition Authority slapped Google with a 500 million euro fine for not complying with the regulator’s order on conducting talks in good faith with France’s news media publishers. This was the largest fine in the French competition watchdog’s history for a failure to comply with one of its orders.
Australia passed a law in February, which was fiercely opposed by the U.S. tech giants. At one point, Facebook even blocked all news content to Australians on its platform, and Google threatened to remove its search engine from Australia – a warning shot to policymakers everywhere, including Canada...
News isn’t entertainment. As New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow wrote recently, “Democracies cannot survive without a common set of facts and a vibrant press to ferret them out and present them. Our democracy is in terrible danger. The only way that lies can flourish as they now do is because the press has been diminished in both scale and stature. Lies advance when truth is in retreat.”