Supported by a grant from the Open Markets Institute’s Center for Journalism and Liberty, Dan Froomkin wrote for the Washington Monthly on how 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 will largely focus 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.