Tech Is Starting to Lose Its War on Journalism

It seems like only yesterday that journalism faced existential challenges from technology platforms that helped anyone publish whatever they wanted, took over the distribution of news, and usurped the advertising market with promises of precise targeting. It turns out that the news profession can be quite successful at repelling those challenges. The enemy is in retreat; the news business just needs to be bolder about claiming the spoils.

In the past week, the Huffington Post scaled back its platform for unpaid bloggers and Facebook decided to ask users to rank news sources by trustworthiness. Both represent a clear preference for traditional journalism -- in which people get paid for producing stories for good reason. The just-released 2018 Edelman Trust Barometer shows rising confidence in traditional media: In the 28 countries where the survey was conducted, 59 percent now trust journalism, up from 54 percent a year ago, while trust in social media platforms has declined from 53 percent to 51 percent. Pretty much everywhere in the Western world, professional media are considered to be more reliable sources of information than online platforms.