Why it's more important than ever to read local news (Part 3)

When readers started finding their news on their phones thanks to aggregators like Google, local newspaper publishers never formally challenged them and took their case to the public.?

By the time they did, it was too late for the newspaper industry.

Think about other industries and how this would not be allowed.?

Would car companies let somebody else buy their new cars at a lower price and offer them to the public for free? Of course not.?

But staunchly independent publishers waited too long to team up with the large metro dailies to fight Google to stop them from selling their product for free.?

Newspaper publishers should take Google to court, claiming everything from lost revenue to lost circulation and what that cost them. Instead, they’ve gone to well-heeled politicians (many of whom they criticized for years on their Opinion pages) in Washington DC — hat in hand — and asked for legislation to save them.?

Ask yourself this question: Would the great newspaper publishers like William Randolph Hearst or Jospeh Pulitzer have stood for that??

Of course not! They would have used their newspapers to attack Google by doing story after story, and editorial after editorial, about Google, Facebook, X/Twitter and every other competitor taking money from their pockets.?

The newspaper business needs leadership at every level, and that leadership needs to point out where news organizations and companies are making bad decisions and why.?

Besides standing up to the Googles of the world, that leadership needs to tell readers why they need to go directly to news websites instead of the Googles of the world.

So bookmark your local newspaper’s website and go to it directly the next time you want to read news online. It might be a small step, but remember every journey begins with a single step — and so should the battle against large corporate news aggregators looking to give away valuable news content for free.

The author worked as managing editor for the Sun Prairie (WI) Star for 33-plus years until 2023, and currently works as a freelance writer for the Middleton Times-Tribune. He currently is the Chief Innovation Officer for his company, 608 Beacon Enterprises LLC; learn more online at www.608beaconenterprisesllc.com.?