Journalism Competition Taken Up in the Senate

Posted on Sunday, January 30, 2022 at 7:25 PM

The Senate Antitrust Subcommittee will examine the issue in a hearing next week.

Next week, the US Senate will conduct a hearing on antitrust issues facing the journalism sector, entitled “Breaking the News -- Journalism, Competition and the Effects of Market Power on a Free Press,” reports John Eggerton of Next TV. The hearing comes in advance of proposed legislation to protect publishers in an online and social publishing landscape filled with potential legal landmines. Eggerton writes that the “Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA), ... would grant publishers immunity from federal and state antitrust laws for a 48-month period while they bargain collectively with digital platforms.”

The bill is seeing bipartisan support in the Senate, cosponsored by Senators John Kennedy (R-LA) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN). The House Antitrust Subcommittee is taking up a similar bill, led by committee chair David Cicilline (D-RI), who “has argued that if the balance of power remains as it is, Big Tech’s dominance of digital advertising could be an ‘extinction-level event’ for local media.” Read more here.

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A Banner Year for Press Freedom Infringement

Posted on Sunday, January 30, 2022 at 7:24 PM

The plight of journalists.

Last year proved to be a particularly fraught one for American journalists. Kirstin McCudden of the Columbia Journalism Review reports: “While we did not see the scope of national social-justice protests of 2020 -- a year in which journalists were arrested or assaulted on average more than once a day -- 2021 still outpaced the years before it for press-freedom violations.” Removing 2020 from the equation, McCudden says, 2021 saw “more than 140 assaults of journalists in 2021 ... outpaces assaults from 2017 to 2019 combined.”

There is some encouraging news in other categories, though; according to McCudden, “For the first time in five years of documentation, the number of publicly-known subpoenas or other legal orders has decreased rather than increase,” likely the result of the Biden DOJ’s June 2021 decision to stop seizing journalist records in leak investigations. Read more here.

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Also In the News...

Posted on Sunday, January 30, 2022 at 7:24 PM

Losing Working Mothers and Caregivers

Next week, the US Senate will conduct a hearing on antitrust issues facing the journalism sector, entitled “Breaking the News -- Journalism, Competition and the Effects of Market Power on a Free Press,” reports John Eggerton of Next TV. The hearing comes in advance of proposed legislation to protect publishers in an online and social publishing landscape filled with potential legal landmines. Eggerton writes that the “Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA), ... would grant publishers immunity from federal and state antitrust laws for a 48-month period while they bargain collectively with digital platforms.”

The bill is seeing bipartisan support in the Senate, cosponsored by Senators John Kennedy (R-LA) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN). The House Antitrust Subcommittee is taking up a similar bill, led by committee chair David Cicilline (D-RI), who “has argued that if the balance of power remains as it is, Big Tech’s dominance of digital advertising could be an ‘extinction-level event’ for local media.” Read more here.

Hotel Software in the Newsroom

Some publishers are turning to new IT solutions to manage operations that have become increasingly complex in the post-2020 workplace. Sara Guaglione of Digiday reports that “publishers have turned to workplace software companies like Envoy and Condeco as a platform for reserving desks, gathering data on office usage and, in some cases, tracking employees’ vaccination status.” Hoteling software is proving useful in this new reality because it can, as Guaglione says, “provide employees with the ability to reserve available desk space when assigned desks are no longer the case” and help publishing managers “to adjust to the reality that all employees wouldn’t be coming into the office five days a week.” Read more here.

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IMPORTANT NEWS

Posted on Sunday, January 30, 2022 at 7:23 PM

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