The News/Media Alliance, the largest nonprofit trade association in the United States representing news, magazine, and digital media organisations, is launching a new ad campaign challenging Big Tech’s use of their content.

The campaign, which will run in member publications throughout October, calls readers to “Protect the News You Trust” and “Don’t Let Big Tech Cancel Local News” by calling their members of Congress and demanding that they stop Big Tech companies from using journalistic content without compensation. 

This campaign comes at a pivotal moment for the news media industry. Publishers are under attack from Big Tech companies, who take their content without payment, draining the creators of quality content of the resources they need to keep informing and connecting their communities.

Market dominance by major tech platforms like Google and Meta, and technological change such as the growth of AI, have combined to devastate the business models of publishers, both large and small. Big Tech companies rely on news publishers – up to 40% of Google search results are news content – but they keep almost all the revenue from that content for themselves. 

For every dollar spent on digital advertising, Big Tech takes up to 70 cents, leaving publishers with just a fraction of the revenue their stories generate. The value of online distribution through Big Tech platforms continues to decline for news publishers, with some losing more than a third of their web traffic in the last year alone. The results have been devastating. Thousands of reporters have been laid off, thousands of local newspapers have shuttered, and millions of Americans have lost access to consistent, reliable reporting on their local communities.

The new campaign is running in advance of the Alliance’s October 8 Washington, DC, Fly-In, an annual event in which dozens of the organisation’s members visit the Capitol to advocate directly to members of Congress for policies that will help their industry. Despite a government shutdown, they still plan on walking the halls of Congress next week to make their case.