News Publishers Launch Campaign Demanding Fair Compensation from Big Tech
The News/Media Alliance, representing a broad coalition of news, magazine, and digital media organizations, is launching a new campaign to address what it calls unfair content practices by major technology platforms. The initiative, running throughout October in member publications, urges readers to “Protect the News You trust” and “Don’t Let Big Tech Cancel Local News” by contacting their representatives in Congress.
The campaign highlights the growing financial strain on news organizations due to the dominance of companies like Google and Meta. Publishers argue these platforms benefit considerably from news content – with news comprising as much as 40% of Google search results – while retaining the vast majority of advertising revenue generated from it. Data suggests Big Tech captures up to 70 cents of every dollar spent on digital advertising,leaving publishers with a drastically reduced share of the income their reporting generates.
This imbalance is contributing to a steep decline in online traffic for news publishers, with some reporting a loss of over a third of their web traffic in the past year. The consequences are severe: widespread layoffs of journalists, the closure of local newspapers, and a resulting decrease in consistent, reliable local reporting for millions of Americans.
The Alliance frames this as a critical moment for the industry,asserting that publishers are being financially undermined by Big Tech’s use of their content without fair compensation. the campaign aims to build public pressure on lawmakers to consider policies that address this issue.
The launch coincides with the Alliance’s annual Washington D.C. fly-In on October 8th, where members will directly lobby Congress for policies supporting the news industry. Despite the current government shutdown, the Alliance confirmed its members will proceed with their advocacy efforts next week. More details on the Fly-In can be found here.Further details on the campaign are available at https://www.newsmediaalliance.org/support-journalism-2025/.
