Note: This was originally published at the Columbia Journalism Review website, where I am the chief digital writer
In March of 2019, the company now known as Meta announced the Facebook Journalism Project, a plan to spend $300 million over three years “supporting local journalists and newsrooms with their newsgathering needs in the immediate future, and helping local news organizations build sustainable business models.” At an event in Denver that same month, called the Accelerate: Local Media Summit, Facebook’s news partnerships team insisted their commitment to helping journalism was genuine, and that this commitment was shared at the highest levels of the company, including the CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. “This is something Mark cares about,” one staffer said.
If that was true, it doesn’t seem to be the case any more, as Meta has spent the past year cutting funding for and downsizing most of its journalism efforts. Last month, it laid off a number of the staffers in charge of its journalism programs, including several who were in charge of local news partnerships, as well as Meta’s director of international news partnerships, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. Campbell Brown, who was previously in charge of news partnerships for Meta, was recently moved into a role handling partnerships with everyone from entertainment companies to sports teams.
In June, the Wall Street Journal said Meta was “reconsidering” its payments to publishers as part of the Facebook News program, which featured news stories from certain outlets in a special News tab. The company reportedly paid annual fees of more than $15 million to the Washington Post, just over $20 million to the New York Times, and more than $10 million to The Journal. Those payments have since been halted and are not expected to resume.
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