Supporting Media Viability in the Americas: Towards Sustainable Journalism

Abstract

If journalism is a fundamental gear of democracy, then democracy is somewhat in danger. While the Internet has offered unparalleled access to information to the world, journalism as an industry is in crisis. In many countries around the world, but specially in Latin America, the possibility of making a living out of the desire to tell stories is increasingly shrinking. Media outlets suffer from the migration of private and public advertising to the Internet, a process that has empowered several intermediary companies that have almost monopolized the advertising industry. While these powerful companies have developed programs directed at supporting journalism, the challenge remains. Media viability in a changing world is still a question without a definitive answer. We propose to address it looking at the problem from a Latin American standpoint, one that considers not only the challenge produced by technological change but also the underlying conditions that make the problem a specially serious one in the region.