As you are aware, social media such as Google and Facebook carry the news articles and high quality stories. As the audience gets free access, they avoid the media from which the stories are sourced.

Gathering news, editing it and validating it, and putting it in perspective and context is a costly business. Who pays the costs? Obviously, the advertisers. In return, they reach wider audiences. This is the model of the traditional media. Had there been no advertising, consumers would have to pay far more for their daily dose of news and its analysis.

In today’s world, Google and Facebook duopoly get most of the advertising, leaving meagre revenue for traditional media companies. It is difficult for them to invest in newsrooms and generate the content ultimately to benefit the aggregators such as Google and Facebook.

Ideally, the tech companies must share the advertising revenuue with those who generate content. Though aggregators do perform a service, that by itself cannot entitle them to the total advertising revenue generated by the news content.

Increasing number of people consume news online. It may be a demographic change or habit change. Such a change starves the traditional media of advertising or subscription revenue. This could kill the news business itself.

Google has started thinking about this and is considering to part with some of its earnings with the media companies.