Should the government "fix" local news?

There’s the understandable urge to “do something” to fix the difficult situation the news business finds itself in. Government intervention in markets has historically been less common in the U.S., but we’re in a time of aggressive industrial policy becoming the norm with measures like the Chips Act and the climate bill.

Enter the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, a bill that was attached to the defense bill winding its way through Congress. The JCPA would force big tech platforms to pay local news publishers for the privilege of sending traffic to these publishers.

The measure, which at the moment has been removed from the defense bill although it could always get added back in upcoming the back-and-forth, has proponents who claim that it is a “lifeline” to local publishers by sweeping aside antitrust restrictions to allow them to collectively negotiate terms with big tech platforms like Google and Facebook parent company Meta. Detractors see a cash grab by local news chains that are often run by deep pocketed private equity firms. For its part, Meta has threatened to exit exit news altogether if the measure passes.

On this week’s episode of The Rebooting Show, I spoke to Chris Krewson, executive director of the Local Independent Online News publishers group, to understand the possible unintended consequences to the bill, which Chris sees as mostly benefiting incumbents, many of which continue to cut journalists as a result of bad business decisions. It doesn’t help that many legacy chains are owned by private equity firms that probably shouldn’t need government assistance.