Big Tech Has Crushed the News Business. That’s About to Change.

News organizations have long hoped that tech platforms would pay them for news. Now regulators abroad are moving to make that happen. A report by Australian regulators left little doubt about what they see as the cause of local journalism’s demise — the near-monopolistic power of Google and Facebook. And it has set off a chain of events that could shift the balance of power between big tech and the news at a dire moment for journalism. “Global tech companies are not beyond national laws, especially when there is so much at stake,” Rod Sims, the chairman of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, and author of the report. Sims and a like-minded regulator in France, Isabelle de Silva, are challenging a universally accepted fact of the internet: that Google and Facebook can carry content created by news organizations without directly paying the organizations for creating it.