Danielle Coffey’s first ew weeks as the News/Media Alliance (NMA) chief executive were anything but "business as usual." After being appointed the new president and CEO of this leading trade organization, representing over 2,000 news and magazine media outlets worldwide, some of the most critical issues and advocacy concerning Western news media's future required immediate attention. That list includes Gannett’s recent stand-alone antitrust filing against Google; Canada's final passage of the Canadian Journalism Compensation Bill, which will require big-tech companies like Google & Facebook to pay news organizations for the content they monetize; and how this may impact the U.S. Congress passing laws that would offer similar compensation to American news outlets. In addition, the congressional support of the Local Journalism Sustainability Act (LJSA) has reemerged — legislation that would help fund local journalism via tax incentives to publishers for salaries, businesses who invest in advertising support and even the news consumers for any fees or subscriptions, paid to access the content created by local newsrooms.
And if that slate of issues is not enough to keep the NMA staff working overtime, add to the pile the expanding concern by both readers and publishers with the growth of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and how the creation of news content via algorithms without human intervention, is amplifying the already existing fears of how truth can be maintained in the multimedia news ecosystem.
Luckily, Coffey is no novice when it comes to understanding the challenges of the business of creating credible, journalistic news within a sustainable business model since her promotion to NMA CEO came from within, having previously held the position of Executive Vice President and General Counsel since 2015, when the organization operated under the name of The Newspaper Association of America.
In this episode of “E&P Reports,” we go one-on-one with the new President/ CEO of the News/Media Alliance (NMA), Danielle Coffey, with a high-speed interview that gains her perspective on some of the most critical legislative issues the news publishing industry is facing today, like "big tech" compensation, local journalism tax credits, AI and more. Coffey offers a frank, well-researched background and analysis of where the industry stands today and how she is leading the NMA to help us all navigate these challenges in the future.
