In 2011, Rupert Murdoch announced the beginning of a “new digital renaissance” for news. The newspaper giant was launching an iPad-inspired publication called The Daily. Chasing tech’s distribution and cash, news firms strike deals to try to ride out the digital wave. They make concessions to platforms that attempt to take all of the audience (and trust) that great journalism attracts, without ever having to do the complicated and expensive work of the journalism itself.

Publishers like News Corp did it with Apple and the iPad, investing huge sums in flashy content that didn’t make them any money but helped Apple sell more hardware. They took payouts from Google to offer their journalism for free through search, only to find that it eroded their subscription businesses. They lined up to produce original video shows for Facebook and to reformat their articles to work well in its new app. Then the social-media company canceled the shows and the app. Many news organizations went out of business.

Now publishers are deep in negotiations with tech firms such as OpenAI to sell their journalism as training for the companies’ models. That media companies would rush to do these deals after being so burned by their tech deals of the past is extraordinarily distressing. And these AI partnerships are far worse for publishers. They are using AI to disrupt internet search—to help users find a single answer faster than browsing a few links. So why would anyone want to read a bunch of news articles when an AI could give them the answer, maybe with a tiny footnote crediting the publisher that no user will ever click on?

Tech companies act in their interest. Ask six publishers how they should be paid by these tech companies, and they will spout off six different ideas. One common idea publishers describe is getting a slice of the tech companies’ revenue based on the percentage of the total training data their publications represent. That’s impossible to track, and there’s no way tech companies would agree to it. Even if they did agree to it, there would be no way to check their calculations.

The news industry finds itself in this dangerous spot, yet again, in part because it lacks a long-term focus and strategic patience. Many large media companies are run by executives who want to live to see another quarter, not set up their companies for the next 50 years. At the same time, the industry’s lobbying power is eroding. Tech companies clearly have far more influence than media companies.

The long-term solutions are far from clear. But the answer to this moment is painfully obvious. Publishers should be patient and refrain from licensing away their content for relative pennies. They should protect the value of their work, and their archives. They should have the integrity to say no. It’s simply too early to get into bed with the companies that have no compelling case for how they will help build the news business.

The author implies in Paragraph 4 that it would be impossible for publishers to