Jeff Bezos’ News Tech Takeover? Discussing Issues Raised by Arc XP
View a virtual conversation presented by the Open Markets Institute and the Center for Journalism & Liberty with journalist Dan Froomkin concerning his July/August article in the Washington Monthly: “Jeff Bezos’ Next Monopoly: The Press.”
With Bezos’ vast investment in The Washington Post’s digital publishing technology Arc XP, Froomkin reported, the Amazon founder could soon control the backbone of most large American newspapers. Rutgers Law Professor Ellen Goodman, an expert in media policy, moderated the conversation.
Supported by a grant from the Open Markets Institute’s Center for Journalism and Liberty, Froomkin concluded that Bezos’ control of Arc XP digs an even deeper hole for a news industry already reeling from Google and Facebook’s monopolization of online advertising. Thanks to Arc’s ownership structure, a growing number of America’s struggling newspapers - both large and small - now pay millions to one of the world’s richest men for use of a publishing system that leverages data from users, publishers and advertisers.
This one-on-one conversation focused on three areas:
• The nuanced difficulties for news organizations to remain competitive in today’s transitory media environment, in light of changing technology and advertising revenue that largely enriches dominating platforms
• Harms and opportunities presented by Arc XP, given its reliance on data gathered from publishers, subscribers and advertisers
• A call for Bezos to convert Arc XP into an open-source publishing solution to provide technological stability to news providers across the nation.
THE SPEAKERS
• Dan Froomkin, who runs the independent nonprofit Press Watchers, is a trailblazer in the area of online accountability journalism with more than two decades of experience building, editing and contributing to websites including the Huffington Post, The Intercept, and the Nieman Foundation's Watchdog Project. Over 12 years at the Washington Post, he served as editor of the website and wrote its enormously popular White House Watch column, which aggregated and amplified insightful political coverage.
• Distinguished Professor Ellen P. Goodman of Rutgers Law School specializes in information policy law, including media policy, privacy, data ethics, advertising, and digital platform power. She is co-director and co-founder of the Rutgers Institute for Information Policy & Law is a senior fellow at the Digital Innovation & Democracy Institute, part of the German Marshall Fund, and a Knight Foundation grantee focused on platform regulation and transparency.
The Center for Journalism & Liberty is part of the Knight Research Network, which focuses on issues at the nexus of technology, media and democracy. Goodman is part of the Center’s advisory board.
Read the full transcript here.