You’re reading the My News Biz newsletter, which I will be sending you every other Thursday. My goal is to help you and other digital media entrepreneurs to find a viable business model that works for you. If you were forwarded this email, you can sign up here. When tech controls the messageTruth hangs in the balance; local news must build community to remain trustworthy
You’re reading the Your News Biz newsletter. My goal is to help digital media entrepreneurs find viable business models. In my last newsletter, I wrote about how the medium is still the message (see Marshall McLuhan, 1975) , and how the power-hungry still seek to control it. Those who control the new communications technology can control a community, a region, a nation, and beyond. In this newsletter we’ll touch on:
There was no ‘Golden Age’Many people yearn for a simpler time when “news was better,” but that supposed Golden Age never existed. It was just that for most of the post-war period, audiences had few alternatives — three broadcast networks and a local daily. Pretty much all the broadcasters and newspapers covered the same stories the same way. For consumers, it was easy, predictable. Not a lot of choices to confuse you. During the turbulent 1960s — civil rights demonstrations, the Viet Nam war, plus sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll — authorities from the White House on down were appalled by the disruption. People forget that our government tried to suppress the Pentagon Papers that the New York Times published in 1971 to show how the executive branch misled Congress and the public about the Viet Nam war. And they forget that most national media at first ignored or minimized the Washington Post’s revelations about Republican corruption in the Watergate scandal. President Nixon threatened legal action against the Post and publisher Katharine Graham. Only later did the rest of the media come around to verify the Post’s reporting. (I began my newspaper career then.) Enter the internet — total disruptionTraditional media dictated when and where you could get access to news. Broadcast came on a fixed schedule; print arrived once daily. But the internet shattered that scarcity, offering free information 24/7. The audiences fled there, and advertisers followed them. Digital ads were cheaper on a cost-per-thousand basis, and the results were trackable in actual sales, which print and broadcast couldn’t do. Traditional media got hammered by cable news networks, streaming, podcasts, and video competitors like YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. Follow the money: advertisers fleeNiche print media that offered unique content survived. But even they were threatened by Google and Facebook, which had better first-party data on the outlets’ own audiences. Papers that failed to pivot slashed staff or shuttered entirely. They’re shadows of their former selves, both as businesses and social influencers. Broadcast media that didn’t offer news 24/7 lost advertisers. They turned to the last mass-appeal product left — the weather. Is it any wonder that weather reports are so long and have scary videos from distant regions? Or that they’re labeled “Storm Center” or “Your Severe Weather Station” to create an urgent need to watch? It’s the most reliable way to still make some money. And as with every leap in messaging technology — from writing to printing to broadcasting — a handful of global giants emerged. Analysts called them FAANG — Facebook, now Meta (social); Amazon (e-commerce, books, movies); Apple (cellphones, hardware); Netflix (streaming movies, TV series); and Google, now Alphabet (search). Then they added Microsoft (software) as another monopolist. As the chart below shows, Meta and Alphabet still control nearly 60% of all digital advertising worldwide. And although their revenue is growing, their share of that market has been shrinking steadily, especially in the last two years. The culprit? AI.
Enter AI and the ‘Attention Economy’Now we’ve gone from an information economy to an attention economy. The medium is no longer just a message—it’s an ecosystem that has fragmented into millions of voices clamoring for attention. The new currency is the time and attention that people dedicate to news and information. Once again, a few U.S.-based companies — Meta, Google (Alphabet), Microsoft, OpenAI (ChatGPT), Apple, and Anthropic (Claude) — are vying to be the information gate-keepers. That’s where the money and power lie. (This week WhatsApp, owned by Meta, announced it is introducing advertising, breaking the app founders’ promise of 11 years ago.) Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg also just announced a $15 billion investment in Scale AI, a company that it hopes will speed up its development of AI tools. Google, Microsoft and Open AI promptly quit using that vendor. Apple has just announced its new operating system, which embeds AI into all of its hardware products. A ‘supercharged’ media environmentThe Reuters Institute’s 2025 Digital News Report, covering 48 countries, is warning of some threats to trustworthy news. Audiences say they want it during this time of “deep political and economic uncertainty.” But media producing “evidence-based and analytical journalism” are not attracting larger audiences.
Audiences are migrating to an “alternative media environment” of podcasters, YouTubers, and TikTokers. “Populist politicians around the world are increasingly able to bypass traditional journalism in favour of friendly partisan media, ‘personalities’, and ‘influencers’.” AI is crushing traffic and revenueThe Wall Street Journal reports that AI chatbots are displacing Google searches, cutting organic referrals (unpaid search) at HuffPost, Business Insider, and the Washington Post by roughly half—putting ad-funded models on life support.
Business Insider’s CEO saw this as a reason to announce a 21% staff cut. What should newsrooms do?
In an interview with Nieman Lab, Richard Gingras, Google’s longtime global vice president for news, believes the goal of a news media organization should be to “create the fabric for the community that allows them to get the information they need and engage with each other.” That way, they can “strengthen the community.” Gingras recently announced his retirement. He has seen how Google’s ad dominance killed the business model of traditional news media. He also has worked to develop products and services that help news media counter that trend. His advice to news media:
The bright spots: niche and local newsThousands of outlets thrive by heeding that advice. They are prospering because they build a community around shared interests. I recently served as a judge for a journalism contest run by LION, the organization of 550 Local Independent Online News publishers. I was impressed with the level of creativity, ingenuity, doggedness, and community impact of the work of very small newsrooms. Several of the entries used AI tools to deepen their reporting. The small, independent news organizations that are making a difference around the world usually don’t make headlines in the mass media outlets. Here are a few more examples:
Final thoughts: AI vs. fact checkersMechanized propaganda floods the information ecosystem with deepfakes and fabricated “news.” The tactic is to overwhelm; repeated falsehoods breed belief. This “flood the zone” technique promoted by media manipulators is designed to confuse people. Most people don’t have the time or the expertise to research every bogus claim put out by interested parties. (Reality Check’s fact-checking service found conservatives were “baselessly claiming” that the Minnesota shooting suspect was a registered Democrat and inaccurately described him as a “leftist.”) I have to admit feeling depressed when I hear someone repeat with certainty a falsehood that I know has been cooked up in the conspiracy kitchen. Junk is cheap, verification costlyJonathan Swift nailed it in 1710, “Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it.” And in the age of electronic communication, “A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on.” It’s easy, cheap, and lucrative to promote scary, sensational rumors and conspiracy theories. Verifying rumors takes time and money. So the truth usually does come limping after. But I am encouraged by all the grass-roots organizations worldwide that are producing trustworthy news and information — in spite of everything. Remember the words of sociologist Margaret Mead:
Next time: Some AI tools that small, local media organizations can use to multiply their impact and efficiency. You're currently a free subscriber to Your News Biz. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.
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jueves, 19 de junio de 2025
When tech controls the message
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