On June 9, Keach Hagey and Alexandra Bruell—two Wall Street Journal reporters who cover the major digital platforms—reported that Facebook, a subsidiary of Meta Platforms, was “re-examining its commitment to paying for news,” according to several unnamed sources who were described as being familiar with Facebook’s plans. The potential loss of those payments, the Journal reporters wrote, was “prompting some news organizations to prepare for a potential revenue shortfall of tens of millions of dollars.” The Journal story echoed a report published in May by The Information, a subscription-only site that covers technology; in that piece, reporters Sylvia Varnham O’Regan and Jessica Toonkel said Meta was “considering reducing the money it gives news organizations as it reevaluates the partnerships it struck over the past few years,” and that this reevaluation was part of a rethinking of “the value of including news in its flagship Facebook app.”
Meta wouldn’t comment to either the Journal or The Information, and a spokesperson told CJR the company “doesn’t comment on speculation.” But the loss of payments from Meta could have a noticeable impact for some outlets. According to the Journal report, for the past two years—since the original payment deals were announced in 2019— Meta has paid the Washington Post more than $15 million per year, the New York Times over $20 million per year, and the Journal more than $10 million per year (the payments to the Journal are part of a broader deal with Dow Jones, the newspaper’s parent, which is said to be worth more than $20 million per year). The deals, which are expected to expire this year, were part of a broader system of payments Meta made to a number of news outlets, including Bloomberg, ABC News, USA Today, Business Insider, and the right-wing news site Breitbart News. Smaller deals were typically for $3 million or less, the Journal said.
The payments were announced as part of the launch of the “News tab,” a dedicated section of the Facebook app where readers can find news from the outlets that partnered with Meta (higher payments were made to those with paywalls, according to a number of reports). The launch was a high-profile affair, including a one-on-one interview between Robert Thomson, CEO of News Corp.—parent company of Dow Jones and the Journal—and Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta. Emily Bell, director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia, wrote for CJR that the meeting was like “a Camp David for peace between the most truculent old media empire and one of its most noxious disruptors,” and wondered how much it had cost for News Corp. to forget about its long-standing opposition to Facebook’s media strategy. The event was “a publicity coup for Facebook; it tamed the biggest beast in the journalism jungle,” Bell wrote.
Note: This was originally published as the daily newsletter for the Columbia Journalism Review, where I am the chief digital writer
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