"Digital advertising has become a major business for Google’s parent company, Alphabet, with revenue nearly quadrupling in the past decade. Google advertising,

"Digital advertising has become a major business for Google’s parent company, Alphabet, with revenue nearly quadrupling in the past decade. Google advertising, which includes Google search, YouTube ads and other networks, racked in an unprecedented $237.8 billion in 2023." Which isn't the cause of news orgs decline. Platforms direct traffic to news sites. News sites have always had the trivial ability to forbid platforms from accessing their content. Wealthy platforms ethical financial obligation is to pay sufficient taxes, not fund news sites. Yes, declining news it is a growing catastrophe. It would be a greater loss if news orgs had a history of well-honoring their 1A protections - that news orgs consistently prioritized challenging the powerful over fluff and parroting every other news org. That didn't happen so we have the lesser (but still catastrophic) loss.