Lawmakers Want to Protect Local Newspapers From Google, Facebook

Google will just point out than any website can block their scraping with a robots.txt and they will just say they will stop using news if they are forced to pay.

And from one of the articles linked:

> But the immediate boost in readership won’t offset the virus’s brutal impact on the pillars holding up the business, publishing executives say. Local advertising spending could fall this year by at least a quarter, amounting to a decline of more than $30 billion, according to one estimate.

The issue is more than online advertisements aren't very lucrative (although Google's monopoly in that area could play a role in that and gives them some power to retaliate).

Frankly, I just don't see the general population willing to pay as much for news as it did in the past. The big stories will be available for free somewhere and even local news can be found on Twitter/social media.

>Frankly, I just don't see the general population willing to pay as much for news as it did in the past. The big stories will be available for free somewhere and even local news can be found on Twitter/social media.

The Wall Street Journal seems to be making its paywall work. I think the New York Times's semi-paywall is doing OK, but that's more to do with the massive surge in readers it gained after ramping up its attacks on Trump after the 2016 election.

In specialty publications, The Athletic is doing well enough to hire new beat writers. Patch is making a profit with ad-driven hyperlocal news.

Otherwise, I agree that straight news publications that aren't the Times or the Journal (and maybe the Washington Post, but it also benefits from anti-Trump sentiment, even aside from the bottomless Bezos cash)—that is, without the brand name—just don't seem viable. When the brand-name publications handle national and international news, Reuters and AP handle other stuff, and Craigslist took away classifieds 20 years ago, where is the room for the average city journal? The answer that most sensible people came to years ago is "There isn't". The only other viable model seems to be ownership by a) nonprofit charities, or b) wealthy people who enjoy the attention from owning the local newspaper.

I hate AMP. It is just a tech to give google more control. Anything to helps kill it off is a good thing. It is possible to create pages that load fast on mobile without it.

Yeah but sometimes it gets around paywalls.

free non-AMP >> free AMP >> paywalled non-AMP

Reddit's AMP is terrible, I wish I could opt-out.