Welcome to The Corner. In this issue, we announce the release of Barry Lynn’s new book, Liberty from All Masters, and we showcase five groundbreaking reports by Open Markets’ Center for Journalism & Liberty that investigate the crisis in American journalism and what to do about it. 

To read previous editions of The Corner, click here.

Barry Lynn’s Book Liberty from All Masters Published on Sept. 29

St. Martin’s Press on Tuesday published Open Markets Executive Director Barry Lynn’s new book, Liberty from All Masters. 

Liberty is Lynn’s first book since 2010’s Cornered. In his new work, Lynn warns of the threat to liberty and democracy posed by Google, Amazon, and Facebook, because of their ability to manipulate the flows of information and business in America. But Lynn also offers a hopeful vision for how we can use anti-monopoly law to rebuild our society and our democracy from the ground up.

Financial Times columnist Rana Foroohar on Monday wrote that Lynn’s examination of U.S. anti-monopoly history provides law enforcers with both a new perspective and a toolkit to tame corporate power. Foroohar wrote that policymakers can use Lynn’s examination of the “American System of Liberty” as a guide to ensure that regulatory policies serve the public interest. Lynn’s book was also reviewed this week by the Washington Monthly, which wrote that Lynn shows how “the weapons that conquered the old trusts can be drawn on Big Tech today.” Lynn this week also published a piece in Wired explaining how America’s system of liberty could open a new era of innovation in Silicon Valley at a time when our world desperately needs new ideas. 

Liberty from All Masters has already made waves for its empowering call to restore democracy by resurrecting forgotten tools and institutions. “Very few thinkers in recent years have done more to shift debate in Washington than Barry Lynn. In Liberty from All Masters, he proves himself as a lyrical theorist and a bold interpreter of history. This book is an elegant summoning of a forgotten tradition that can help the nation usher in a new freedom,” says Franklin Foer, author of World Without Mind and national correspondent for The Atlantic.

Lynn discussed his book with Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and Zephyr Teachout on Thursday evening at an online event, hosted by Our Revolution, titled “The Next American Revolution: Defeating Corporate Monopolies.” Lynn will also discuss Liberty in a series of virtual events with leading thinkers including Foer, Luigi Zingales, Thomas Piketty, Ken Rogoff, and Rana Foroohar, among others. Register for the events here. 

You can order your copy of Lynn’s book here. 

And don’t forget that Simon & Schuster will publish Monopolies Suck by Open Markets Enforcement Director Sally Hubbard on Oct. 27. In this book, Hubbard explains how monopolies threaten fair elections, the free press, our privacy, and, ultimately, the American Dream.

You can pre-order your copy here.  

The Center for Journalism & Liberty Releases Groundbreaking Papers on How to Revitalize Journalism in America

America’s journalism industry has been in a deep crisis for years. Since 2008, newspaper revenue has dropped by 62%, and more than 36,000 newspaper employees have lost their jobs or seen their pay cut. The COVID-19 pandemic has only accelerated the industry’s financial distress, by bankrupting or reducing the revenue of the businesses that still advertise in local news outlets.

This problem poses a direct threat to American democracy. As Joseph Pulitzer wrote more than a century ago, “our Republic and its press will rise or fall together.”

To address these dire circumstances, the Center for Journalism & Liberty (CJL), a program within the Open Markets Institute, published during the past two weeks a series of reports that break new ground in reporting on America’s withering news industry — and in proposing solutions to rejuvenate the industry. 

Drawing on original research and studies of history, these papers provide a series of policy recommendations to restructure news organizations to become financially independent, locally controlled, and regulated in order to better serve the public interest and to ensure the vitality of America’s newsrooms. 

Here are summaries of five of the papers.

Financing Free Speech

In Financing Free Speech: A Typology of Government Competition Policies in Information, Communication, and Media Markets, Daniel Hanley, Phil Longman, and Barry Lynn present America’s 150 years of expansive regulatory policy in the communications, information, and media industries. As the report details, the federal government took an aggressive policy approach to ensure that communications markets spanning television, radio, and movie theaters were deconcentrated, locally controlled, or structured so that no dominant corporation could control an essential communication medium. 

The paper can be read here. 

 

A Replanting Strategy

Steve Waldman, in A Replanting Strategy: Saving Local Newspapers Squeezed by Hedge Funds, explains the dire state of America’s news industry and lays out a plan to revitalize it. Waldman proposes to transform the nation’s roughly 6,700 privately owned newspapers into more community-grounded and financially independent institutions. 

To do so, Waldman proposes the creation of a nonprofit “replanting fund” that would identify candidate newspapers and reorganize their corporate structures to make them more responsive to community needs and financially independent. Joined by Elizabeth Hansen, lead researcher of the News Sustainability and Business Models project at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School, and Marc Hand, CEO of Public Media Venture Group, the CJL hosted a web conference on Sept. 23 for Waldman to present his idea. 

The paper can be read here. 

 

Local News and Community Resiliency in Appalachia

In Local News and Community Resiliency in Appalachia, Michael Clay Carey examines how local news organizations in Appalachia can better serve their communities. Carey interviewed 23 current and former journalists, community development professionals, and activists, and Carey identified several factors positively associated with resilient journalism in Appalachia. Carey argues that local news in Appalachia helps enable open discussions of community issues and helps create opportunities for the development of bridging and bonding social capital. Carey also examines factors that might deter news organizations from acting as community institutions.

The paper can be read here. 

 

What Makes Iowa Newspapers Resilient?

In What Makes Iowa Newspapers Resilient?, Christopher Martin investigates how eight newspapers in Iowa are handling the economic forces battering the industry. Martin interviewed editors, publishers, and general managers of eight newspapers and digital publications across the state and found 10 variables that shape the organizations’ relative levels of success. Extrapolating from these emergent variables, Martin proposes a set of reforms to replicate the successes of the more resilient newspapers. 

The paper can be read here. 

 

Beggars and Choosers

In Beggars and Choosers, Nikki Usher describes the contradictory behavior of Google’s and Facebook’s operations: These corporations simultaneously pledge financial support to bolster quality news but fail to reform their anti-competitive business models and harmful data privacy violations, which continue to disrupt journalism’s ability to pay for itself. Usher explains that, to fix this problem, these dominant corporations should be required to make additional financial disclosures, and news organizations should be provided with an antitrust safe harbor to challenge Google and Facebook’s anti-competitive conduct. 

The paper can be read here. 

🔊 ANTI-MONOPOLY RISING:

• The House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee held a hearing on Thursday, the culmination of its monthslong investigation into the market power of digital platforms, with several experts recommending the breakup of dominant tech firms. Open Markets’ Director of Enforcement Strategy Sally Hubbard provided expert testimony, expanding on her earlier letter to the subcommittee submitted in April.
   

•   The Department of Justice met on Sept. 23 with state attorneys general to discuss its upcoming antitrust suit against Google for the corporation’s dominance in the market for search results and advertising. (Business Insider)
   

•  The Federal Trade Commission announced plans last week to seek a rehearing with the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, after losing an earlier appeal against Qualcomm that sought to challenge the corporation for its dominance of the market for wireless modem chips. (Reuters)
   

• The Department of Justice is investigating the extent to which acquisitions by the medical device corporation Medtronic may have led to a shortage of ventilators, a vital topic of during the coronavirus pandemic. (WSJ)

📝 WHAT WE'VE BEEN UP TO:

• Sally Hubbard testified in the New York Senate to support proposed legislation that would strengthen the powers of the state attorney general and private plaintiffs to bring lawsuits against monopolists. The Institute for Local Self-Reliance mentioned Hubbard’s testimony in its article about the hearing on the proposed Twenty-First Century Antitrust Act.
   

•  Sandeep Vaheesan published an article in The Appeal about how antitrust law, as it is currently interpreted and applied, perpetuates the corporate domination of people of color.  Vaheesan argues that interpretations of antitrust law dating back to the ‘70s have allowed corporations to fix wages, violate worker rights, and dominate franchisees, all harming people of color. 
   

•  Garphil Julien published a piece in Barron’s about how a group of the nation’s biggest banks has cornered the municipal bond market.
   

•  Daniel Hanley published a piece in The American Prospect arguing how the Rural Electrification Act enacted during the Great Depression provides a blueprint to provide universal broadband. 
   

•  Sandeep Vaheesan interviewed Frank Pasquale in The Law and Political Economy Project about Pasquale’s forthcoming book, New Laws of Robotics: Defending Human Expertise in the Age of AI. The book explores the relationship between Big Tech and social justice.
   

•   Sally Hubbard was quoted in The Daily News explaining why controlling corporate mergers is so important for labor regulations and worker’s rights.
   

•  Open Markets was mentioned in Barron’s as an example of the organizations working to curb the unchecked power of monopolies and broadening the focus of antitrust law to include social impacts such as income inequality and unemployment.
   

•  Open Markets was quoted by The International Bar Association for calling for a moratorium on mergers and acquisitions for the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic.
   

• Phil Longman and Jody Brannon were quoted in a piece by the Knight Foundation about the future of technology and democracy.
   

•   Open Markets Institute was mentioned in The American Prospect as a signatory of a joint letter to the state attorneys general, urging them to join antitrust litigation against Google.

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📈 VITAL STAT: $2.7 Billion

The amount that health insurer Blue Cross plans to pay in a federal settlement of charges that Blue Cross had limited competition among its member companies by allocating geographic markets to certain companies in its association. 

📚 WHAT WE'RE READING:

•  Megan Valent: “The United States: Big Data, Little Regulation” (University of Miami Business Law Review): Valent explores both how the United States has not implemented federal laws on data privacy, as well as the harms done by Big Tech’s abuses of  individual privacy rights. Valent argues that these companies should introduce explicit and clear opt-out policies to mitigate the negative effects of the omnipresent collection of consumer data.

Open Markets Employment Opportunities

You can find the full job listings here. 

🔎 TIPS? COMMENTS? SUGGESTIONS?

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