By Gilad Edelman
Publication Date: 2026-01-14 23:13:00
If the story of journalism’s 21st-century decline were purely a tale of technological disruption—of print dinosaurs failing to adapt to the internet—that would be painful enough for those of us who believe in the importance of a robust free press. The truth hurts even more. Big Tech platforms didn’t just out-compete media organizations for the bulk of the advertising-revenue pie. They also cheated them out of much of what was left over, and got away with it.
As someone who has written quite a bit about this dynamic over the years, I was interested to learn that The Atlantic filed an antitrust lawsuit yesterday accusing Google of illegally depriving the company of advertising revenue over the past decade. (The editorial team had no involvement in the decision, and I learned of details through public court filings.) Like similar cases filed by publications including Slate, Business Insider, and—just today—Vox, along with the publishers McClatchy and Advance, this one…
