I seem to be very good at coming up with spectacularly unpopular opinions and being unable to keep them to myself.
This week I seem to be at odds with everyone in my industry. Sorry about that.
Last week, I wrote about One Nation’s fake-news platform and its attack on outlets like ours. Its argument was that any news organisation accepting even a modest government grant is somehow a mouthpiece for government.
That claim is lazy and wrong. But it struck a nerve because there is one part of it I understand: I do not want New England Times to depend on grants either.
I hate the grant cycle. I hate the uncertainty, the paperwork and the sense that the future of a newsroom can rest on the next funding round. We should be paid in the marketplace: businesses paying to reach the large, engaged audience we have built and work hard to maintain, that isa very effective form of marketing. That is a healthier model for us, for readers and, importantly, for editorial independence.
It’s a model I have not been able to get to work. Still hoping for that overnight success moment I guess.
There is also a deep hypocrisy in the way governments talk about supporting local news. Government departments can spend more on Facebook advertising in a week than a small independent outlet might receive in grants over an entire year. Yet local newsrooms are rarely given a fair share of government advertising. We might receive the occasional small local placement—such as notices relating to the current EnergyCo consultations—but the substantial public advertising budgets – and we’re talking over $200m a year just for the federal government – goes anywhere but local news.
If governments genuinely value trusted local journalism, they could simply stop advertising on Facebook, and put more of their existing advertising spend into the local news outlets that serve communities every day. That is not a subsidy. It is an advertising decision—and a sensible one. Local news is, and will always be, one of the most effective advertising channels available to any organisation.
It’s also an easy one. They just send an email to the government buyer and say ‘pull all advertising from big tech platforms and push to local news’. It’s jut a matter of key strokes to fix it.
But Albanese does love to do things the hardest way possible.
The coming News Bargaining Incentive is meant to address the very real problem created when Google, Meta and other platforms captured a revenue base that once sustained local journalism. They built immensely profitable advertising businesses around audiences that news organisations helped create, while publishers were left trying to fund reporting with a fraction of the income.
No serious person should deny the damage that has done to local news.
But I disagree with the government’s remedy.
The proposal is essentially a tax-and-offset system. Large platforms that fail to strike enough deals with a whopping six (6) Australian news businesses would pay a levy; the more they pay news organisations directly, the less levy they face. Any money collected would then be redistributed through a government-administered framework.
I understand the instinct. The government wants to force platforms back to the table after Meta walked away from previous deals. But Meta has demonstrated in Canada it is very happy to block news from their platforms entirely – and they did that in 2023, and haven’t blinked once. To Meta, content is content. They don’t distinguish by type, and won’t pay for news.
It also makes sense that LinkedIn has been brought into the conversation. Closed platforms, including LinkedIn and Reddit, benefit from the reporting, ideas and conversations generated by news organisations, even when the commercial return to publishers is thin or non-existent. AI companies deserve the same scrutiny when they use or benefit from journalism.
But a complicated tax, fine, negotiation and grant system is not my preferred answer. It risks replacing one damaging dependency—with global platforms—with another: government-administered funding.
There is a better path: work with the platforms, and require meaningful reciprocity.
Facebook and Google absolutely have the power to make or break many news organisations. But they also have the systems to return value directly to the people producing the content.
We have seen that Facebook monetisation can work. On our main page, it has been a genuine source of income since we got let into the system two months ago. Would we like a higher rate of return? Sure, and perhaps that’s something government can negotiate with them.
Google already shares advertising revenue in some contexts – about half our ad slots now are from Google’s ad exchange. And within that existing framework, it would be very easy for Google to develop an option that gives all kinds of advertisers the ability to direct their advertising to news sites – it could be as simple as a check box ‘place on premium news sites’.
These are not impossible ideas; they are existing mechanisms that could be improved and extended. With just a matter of key strokes – no legislation required – we could fix this.
It shouldn’t be that hard to imagine a premium news advertising product on Google that guaranteed a meaningful rate—say, a $25 CPM—for advertising around registered Australian news content. Or imagine Meta lifting its payment rate for monetised news content from a few cents to something closer to a dollar. The precise figures can be negotiated. The principle is what matters: pay publishers directly for the measurable value their journalism creates.
The platforms make money, publishers make money, advertisers gain access to credible audiences, and governments don’t feel pressured to subsidise news with taxpayers money. Win, win, win, win.
More importantly, it would improve democracy. More news, more transparency, more quality reporting, keeping more of the bastards honest.
The real threat is not simply that platforms have taken advertising revenue. It is that quality journalism is becoming harder to find precisely where Australians spend their time, because real news is not lifted above the noise in the algorithm. If we are negotiating with big tech on anything, it should be asking them to help users discover registered, accountable news outlets in search and social feeds.
That is the obligation I would like to see: uprank registered Australian news organisations.
Not partisan channels or fake news outlets or conspiracy theorists that just call themselves news. Registered news businesses that meet clear standards of professionalism, editorial independence and accountability. Lift quality reporting above the noise in the interests of a well informed electorate.
For platforms that offer no meaningful reciprocity—closed networks, aggregators and AI systems—a licensing model makes more sense. If they benefit from our work, they should pay for it. But the payment should be transparent, commercial and connected to the value extracted, not filtered through a maze of tax offsets and grant allocations.
We should be aiming for a media economy that rewards work, audience trust and journalistic quality. Not one where newsrooms spend their time negotiating survival with governments and technology giants.
Big Tech has damaged the old business model. But the solution should not be to turn local news into charity.
Work with big tech – not against it – for the long term future of local news.
End rant.
Dr RK (Kath) Crosby is the CEO of research and strategy company KORE CSR, former strategist for the Australian Democrats, and holds a PhD in political behaviour. She is also a well known migraine and health advocate, and the Publisher of New England Times and North Coast Times.