Must Big Beget Big? Why Monopolization Is Not the Answer to Monopolization

Last Thursday, the Justice Department (DOJ) sued to prevent printing giant Quad from acquiring its main competitor, LSC Communications. The $1.4 billion deal between “the two most significant magazine, catalog, and book printers in the United States,” the DOJ’s Antitrust Division wrote in its complaint, “threatens to increase prices, reduce quality, and limit availability of printed material that millions of Americans rely on to receive and disseminate information and ideas.” (Read Open Markets’ March letter to the DOJ detailing potential harms from the merger here.)

In response to the lawsuit, Quad vowed to “vigorously defend” the deal and insisted that their competitors are “not only other printers, but also other forms of media,” especially “digital giants such as Google and Facebook.” The DOJ, Quad said in a press release, “does not appear to recognize the competitive effect of digital media on the print industry.”

The DOJ bluntly and appropriately rejected this argument, writing, “Publishers and their customers will continue to demand printed magazines, catalogs, and books in the future.” Indeed, as Open Markets detailed in its letter, many publications have actually expanded their print products over the last year. And when it comes to book printing, as The New York Times reported in December, there has already been shortages of printing services for book publishers.

Yet the decision also underscores a deeper, perverse irony. Both print and digital journalism are indeed threatened by the increasing dominance of giant, digital platform monopolies, specifically when it comes to thecompetition over advertising dollars. As Slate’s Ben Mathis-Lilley noted in January, “… it’s gotten harder and harder for news outlets to make money off of the readers they have because such a huge share of advertising spending is sucked up by Facebook and Google, with what’s left increasingly going to Amazon.”

But that problem isn’t solved by either preventing or encouraging concentration among the nation’s few remaining printers. The answer is increased enforcement of anti-monopoly laws where they matter most.  Since 2000, Google has acquired over 270 companies, including advertising technology companies like Doubleclick and AdMob that have bolstered its dominance in online advertising.  Enforcers have similarly allowed Facebook to expand vertically and horizontally in ways that make a mockery of traditional American competition policies. Let’s hope that DOJ uses its power prevent and break up corporate concentration, not just among traditional printers, but among the digital platform monopolies that are causing so much more damage to our economy and our politics.