Journalism

The news business is on pace for its worst job losses in a decade as about 3,000 people have been laid off or been offered buyouts in the first five months of 2019. The cuts have been widespread. Newspapers owned by Gannett and McClatchy, digital media companies like BuzzFeed and Vice Media, and the cable news channel CNN have all shed employees. The level of attrition is the highest since 2009, when the industry saw 7,914 job cuts in the first five months of that year in the wake of the financial crisis. 

President Donald Trump joked with Russian President Vladimir Putin about meddling in the US elections. After the two leaders met on the sidelines of the G20 summit, a reporter shouted a question at President Trump about whether he’d warned President Putin not to interfere in US democracy.

A demolition team rolled in to 9 Broadcast Plaza in early June, tearing down Northern New Jersey’s only broadcast television studio.

A platform of recommended media-and-tech policies for all presidential candidates. Over the summer of 2019, Free Press Action will send the platform to each of the presidential candidates. Free Press Action will also generate a scorecard rating each candidate’s positions relative to Right to Connect’s recommendations. What is the platform asking candidates to do?

The shock factor around President Donald Trump's unplanned announcements, staff departures, taunting tweets and erratic behavior is wearing off, and media companies are scrambling to find their next big moneymaker.  Executives say that Trump fatigue is very real: Interest in political coverage overall is down, which is spurring investments in other beats, like technology and the global economy. Executives say they expect this week’s debate ratings to be nothing like the ratings for the 2016 Trump debates.

President Donald Trump ramped up his attacks against the nation's biggest newspapers, saying that a poll should be done to see whether The New York Times or The Washington Post is "more dishonest and deceitful." "A poll should be done on which is the more dishonest and deceitful newspaper, the Failing New York Times or the Amazon (lobbyist) Washington Post!" he said on Twitter.

President Donald Trump accused the New York Times of treason in response to a story the newspaper claimed his administration approved. President Trump responded to a New York Times story that detailed his administration stepping up attacks on Russia’s power grid in response to Russian-directed US election interference.

While social media companies and digital networks are relatively new, the problems of information laundering and manipulation are not. Of course, verbatim application of 20th-century media policy won’t work for today’s digital environment; some of it didn’t work very well last century either. But its core concerns should be taken seriously and its principles—especially transparency, responsibility and structural design to promote news investment—can be adapted for the 21st century.

The House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee held the hearing "Online Platforms and Market Power, Part 1: The Free and Diverse Press", beginning its look at antitrust issues related to the practice of journalism in the age of online platforms with enormous market power. The News Media Alliance, whose president, David Chavern, was testifying, has called on Congress to give news outlets an antitrust exemption so they can flex some collective muscle and negotiate for compensation for all that news content being aggregated and distributed by Facebook, Google and other platforms.

The newspaper industry has crawled up Capitol Hill once again to beg for an antitrust exemption it believes would give the business needed in its fight with Google and Facebook for advertising dollars. Currently, Google and Facebook collect 73 percent of all digital advertising. Members of the news industry believe that the two tech giants have exploited their dominance of the Web to unfairly collect digital dollars that rightfully belong to them.