I feel like media has become more monopolistic than tech and needs to be dealt with first.
I'm personally worried about the dominance of big newspapers. It seems that the field of "trusted online newspapers" has narrowed down to only the New York Times and Washington Post. Most non-Tech Hackernews submissions come from either Nytimes or WaPo.
I worry because these newspapers seem to increasingly be setting the political and social narrative for the entire country. That's a lot of power to give Jeff Bezos and Carlos Slim.
Most local newspapers in the US are slowly dying due to their advertising revenue being killed off in favor of digital ads. I contracted at the Mercury News about five years ago and the vast majority of their income came from a single advertiser and their classified/ads had declined from a section that was larger by itself than the entire newspaper is today. Not enough people want to pay for news to make it worthwhile for smaller players to thrive in the current environment. Also newspapers don't set the political and social narrative for the country - only three printed publications backed Donald Trump and he won the election. That shows the Rupert Murdoch/Fox News TV crowd was more effective, at least with the electoral count if not the popular vote.
I am just pointing that out because your comment doesn't make sense as it reads like these newspapers are becoming 'increasingly' dominant or narrative setting.
First, Carlos Slim is a minority shareholder in the NY Times (and he actually sold off most of his stake last December), not an editorial board member.
Second, the old-school newspapers still have a very strong culture of research and reporting interwoven deeply within their walls. Sure, they make mistakes, but they have a much greater stake in the accuracy and importance-weighting of their news reporting than a user-driven content company like Facebook or Twitter.
> down to only the New York Times and Washington Post
You missed numbers 1 (the Wall Street Journal), 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 in America’s top eight by circulation [1]. Not to mention the proliferation of specialist papers (e.g. Axios, POLITICO, the Information, et cetera) and foreign papers (e.g. the BBC, Economist, FT, et cetera) and wire services (e.g. Reuters, AFP, the AP, et cetera).
I'm personally worried about the dominance of big newspapers. It seems that the field of "trusted online newspapers" has narrowed down to only the New York Times and Washington Post. Most non-Tech Hackernews submissions come from either Nytimes or WaPo.
I worry because these newspapers seem to increasingly be setting the political and social narrative for the entire country. That's a lot of power to give Jeff Bezos and Carlos Slim.