Laid-off journalists launch ads targeting tech giants

The Save Journalism Project, a group started by recently laid-off reporters aimed at highlighting tech giants’ effect on the news industry, is launching its first ad campaign this week. The campaign urges lawmakers to take on Facebook and Google.

John Stanton, a former D.C. bureau chief at Buzzfeed News, and Laura Bassett, who was laid off from her job as a Huffington Post reporter this year, launched the groupearlier this month to bring attention to how tech platforms’ stranglehold on digital advertising revenue harms local and online news publishers.

“Big Tech companies like Google and Facebook have consumed approximately 60 percent of all digital ad revenue, making it difficult for even online news outlets with national reach to survive, let alone local ones,” Stanton, a longtime political reporter who was laid off in a round of cuts at Buzzfeed this year, said in a statement.

The digital video ad highlighted how the newspaper industry’s revenue plummeted in the past decade as Facebook and Google have achieved explosive growth by taking in the majority of online ad revenue.

The ad campaign will run on Twitter ahead of next week’s Congressional Baseball Game, which the group is helping to sponsor. The group declined to disclose how much money would be spent on the campaign.