Protecting the press as a foundation of democracy | Harvard Magazine

Newspaper newsrooms lost 45 percent of their employees between 2008 and 2017... growing number of “news deserts”: communities where there are no longer media outlets sending reporters to city-council meetings...

Can a healthier news ecosystem be built? ... a role for government in ensuring citizen access to reliable information... “There was always deep involvement by the government in supporting media, assisting media, and shaping media ...

antitrust laws to break up Facebook ... [but] even if Facebook and Google were broken up into four or five companies ... still be enormous.... other strategies... consumer-protection laws ... transparency about ... algorithms ... regulation, to protect citizen access to information. Tax policy ... to incentivize new news organizations... enforcement of fraud in cases of election interference ...

serendipity algorithms... generate content very different from what users normally encounter or seek out ... pay for news circulated on their platforms ... improved media education ...

only one private enterprise ... mentioned in the United States Constitution and it’s the press