Facebook has announced that it will invest and commit $300 million to journalism projects to help local outlets.
In a company blog post, Facebook's head of news partnerships - Campbell Brown - said:
“We’re going to continue fighting fake news, misinformation, and low quality news on Facebook, but we also have an opportunity, and a responsibility, to help local news organizations grow and thrive.”
According to Variety, the funded initiatives are: a $20 million investment in a program to help local outlets design and execute subscription and membership models; a $5 million endowment to create a grant program with the Pulitzer Center for local multimedia reporting projects; and a $2 million investment in Report for America, an initiative to recruit and fund journalists to cover under-covered topics in local newsrooms across the country.
The main focus: boosting subscriptions to local news outlets.
Facebook's decision comes based on feedback from users on what they wanted to see on the platform and from different news outlets who told the company how to better boost their audience impact.
“We heard one consistent answer: people want more local news, and local newsrooms are looking for more support,” Brown said.
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