News publishers descend on Washington, seeking even playing field with Google, Facebook

Washington – News publishers are escalating their push for a bill in Congress that would force big tech companies to compensate local news organizations for content posted on platforms like Google and Facebook.More than 80 news publishers and their representatives plan to visit members of Congress at their Capitol Hill offices today as part of a lobbying blitz for the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act.The bill would give news organizations a temporary anti-trust exemption to negotiate with digital platforms and come up with fair compensation for content produced by their journalists.The legislation could provide a financial boost to struggling local news organizations, which compete with the technology firms for digital advertising revenue.The tech platforms take as much as 70% of the digital ad revenue generated in the United States, according to the News Media Alliance, a trade group of about 2,000 news organizations.The shrinking revenue for local news publishers has contributed to the closing of about 2,500 local newspapers since 2005, or about a quarter of the nation’s newspapers according to a Northwestern University study.The bipartisan legislation sponsored by U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., would grant news operations with fewer than 1,500 full-time employees the
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