High-quality journalism has been recognized since America’s founding as fundamental to the functioning of our democracy. But now, journalism in America is facing an existential threat from the monopolistic control of tech giants like Google, Facebook, and Apple. Big tech’s dominance over the digital advertising market and their unrivaled capacity to monetize its platforms are having drastic effects on journalism as a whole.
Over the last 10 years, newspaper newsrooms have declined in size by 45%, and in 2019, the media shed more than 7,200 jobs.
Google, Apple, and Facebook are using their tech muscles to monetize news for their own profit, but at the expense of journalists.
The Save Journalism Project is an effort to educate and activate journalists across the country to tell the story of big tech’s threat to journalism. We are news publishers, news gatherers, journalists, news photographers, content creators, media influencers, activists, advocates, and organizers. We are defending democracy, fighting to preserve free press, and working to save journalism in the age of big tech. If these are issues you care about too, become an ally.
A robust and well-funded news media is vital to a healthy democracy, but the transition to digital media has ravaged the news industry. News publishers have lost tens of billions in revenue, hundreds of local papers are closing their doors, and journalists continue to lose their jobs by the thousands each year.
Newspapers who adapted and survived the last digital revolution did so through advertising. But today’s digital market is dominated by Google and Facebook — and their stranglehold is only tightening each year. Revenue from digital advertising that used to go to news publishers is now ending up in big tech’s pockets instead.