- General
- January 15, 2019
- 5 minutes read
Facebook To Invest $300 Million In News Partnerships And Programming Over Three Years
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg image : Sit With Me on Flickr Facebook has announced it’s investing $300 million over three…
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| Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg
image : Sit With Me on Flickr
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Facebook has announced it’s investing $300 million over three years on local news partnerships and programming globally, allotting investments to expand memberships and subscription accelerators. It has already distributed $16 million among various journalism non-profits and organizations including the American Journalism Project, Community News Project, Knight-Lenfest Local News Transformation Fund, Report for America and the Pulitzer Center as part of this effort.
It’s investing the same amount allocated for a similar project last year by Google, the ‘Google News Initiative’ through which the company gives out money to “help stimulate innovation in digital journalism” among European publishers. The company last year shifted its News Feed algorithm in favor of more “meaningful interactions” and less Page/news content, This evolved to focus on trusted local news for its users indicating efforts in this space.
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| Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg
image : Brian Solis on Flickr
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“We’re going to continue fighting fake news, misinformation, and low quality news on Facebook,” Facebook’s vice president of Global News Partnerships Campbell Brown said in a statement. “But we also have an opportunity, and a responsibility, to help local news organizations grow and thrive.”
The investments made by Facebook stand out as they are not tied to Facebook-related products, its recipients say. “We are going to continue our work with head publishers. We’re not backing away from that, but it is a shift to local and an emphasis on local that is new for us. I think it’s going to be really important for us moving forward.” Brown said in a Nieman Lab interview.
“…..We will still be seed funding video for Watch and supporting the programs that we’ve currently launched with head publishers as well” Brown added. “……One thing I’ll say on this is that people need to understand is that distribution on the News Feed is going to change. It always has, it always will. For that reason, we don’t want publishers to be dependent on Facebook. We can be part of the solution, not the entire solution.”
