Federal anti-disinformation effort - Publishing merger blocked - Israeli election

A U.S. judge on Oct. 31 ruled that a planned $2.2 billion merger of Penguin Random House and rival Simon & Schuster cannot go forward. The Department of Justice argued it would unfairly limit pay for top authors such as Stephen King. German media group Bertelsmann, owner of Penguin, is going to appeal.
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There’s a case to be made that the [merger] would raise prices for consumers – the standard argument against big deals. Instead, antitrust litigators took a novel approach. The argument that a mega-publisher could suppress author pay is unusual, but fits with a broader push under President Joe Biden’s administration to rethink principles of competition.
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The Department of Justice drew a line in its challenge to Penguin, distinguishing highly paid writers from the rest. The publishers argued in their defense that such a grouping includes just 2% of all books published commercially. Despite that, the Department of Justice on Monday called the ruling “a victory for workers more broadly.”