Fact-based journalism is essential to public health, development, and accountable governance. The increasing dominance of online platforms over our public sphere has led to an uneasy relationship between news organizations and large tech companies. While the latter have generated new opportunities to connect journalists with audiences, evade censorship, and engage in influential cross-border collaborations, they have also forced journalists to contend with shifting algorithmic priorities, warped incentive structures in the online economy, and an increasingly complex array of technology policies that shape the environment in which they work and the business models for sustainability. Perhaps most urgently, the platformization of journalism has contributed to a crisis in funding in which quality journalism, particularly locally-focused and investigative journalism, has struggled to figure out how to navigate sustainability in the information age.

This Symposium, which is organized by the UCLA Institute for Technology, Law & Policy, is intended to respond to the recent wave of legislative proposals aimed at supporting sustainable journalism by considering the trade-offs, challenges and opportunities related to various legislative interventions, with an eye to developing better practice regulatory standards, and a clear roadmap for how institutions should promote quality journalism.

This event is sponsored by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

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Symposium agenda and speakers