Alvarez-Ugarte on Supporting Media Viability in the Americas. Toward Sustainable Journalism

Ramiro Alvarez-Ugarte, University of Palermo, Center for Studies on Freedom of Expression; University of Buenos Aires, Faculty of Law, has published Supporting Media Viability in the Americas. Towards Sustainable Journalism as CELE Research Paper No. 54.

If journalism is an essential gear of democracy, then democracy is somewhat in danger. While the Internet has offered the world unparalleled access to information, journalism as an industry is in crisis. In many countries around the world, but especially 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 by 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 particularly serious one in the region. Note: Downloadable document is in Spanish.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.