Editor And Publisher - Fighting for fairness: How OMI is defending journalism against Big Tech
CJL director Courtney Radsch and senior reporter Karina Montoya were written about in a profile that highlights their advocating for fairer treatment of journalism by challenging Big Tech's dominance, focusing on antitrust issues, and promoting policies to help news publishers navigate the evolving digital landscape, especially in the face of AI's growing influence.
It’s no secret that the decades-long deterioration of the local journalism business model is tightly knitted to the burgeoning evolution of Big Tech search and social media platforms.
Several organizations are defending journalism’s role in the U.S. democracy. The Center for Journalism Liberty, a division of the Open Markets Institute (OMI), is doing so by closely watching how Big Tech is breaching antitrust principles and creating an unfair atmosphere for news publishers.
The Center is picking through the thorny issues while also recommending policy.
“The Open Markets Institute is essentially a political economy think tank that focuses on how to use competition policy and fight monopolies to build stronger democracies and more equitable societies, more innovative economies,” said Courtney Radsch, director of the Center for Journalism and Liberty. The Center “is particularly focused on journalism to ensure and figure out what do sustainable business models for independent, privately funded advertising-funded journalism look like. More broadly, it ensures independence through neutrality and the role that internet intermediaries, technology platforms, and now, AI play in the information ecosystem.”
Newspapers are often scraping the bottom of the barrel for digital advertising. Google has long been able to offer even local advertisers digital reach for far less than newspapers would have to charge. Then, social media companies followed suit with new ways to slice and dice audiences. Now, artificial intelligence companies are creating new threats of many types.
That’s more than a mountain to climb. The industry is trying to survive a volcano of disruption.
Content monetization is changing by the hour, and many Big Tech companies have driven enormous revenue from journalism while undercutting local media companies’ ability to compete for advertising dollars.
To Radsch and publishers worldwide, it’s not a fair fight. Radsch argues that the playing field needs adjustments. The public deserves a chance to have a say in how information is delivered and consumed. To that end, the Center for Journalism and Liberty is constantly busy producing research and designing policy solutions.
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