Abstract: The shift of advertising revenue from news media to digital platforms has coincided with sustained contraction in the journalism industry, particularly at the local level. Several jurisdictions have responded by requiring platforms to compensate news publishers for content displayed on their services. This paper surveys evidence from three major policy experiments—Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code (2021), the European Union’s Article 15 press publishers’ right (2019), and Canada’s Online News Act (2023)—and evaluates the trade-offs such policies involve. Taking the sustainability of news production as a legitimate policy objective, the paper asks when mandatory transfers from platforms to publishers improve welfare and how design choices shape outcomes. Mandatory bargaining has generated substantial payments—over AUD 200 million in Australia and CAD 100 million annually in Canada—but has also been followed by platform withdrawal, with Meta blocking news access for Canadian users since August 2023. The paper identifies design features that appear to influence platform responses, examines distributional consequences for local journalism, and offers recommendations for policymakers seeking to sustain news production in the digital age.