Facebook says it will invest US$300 million in local news journalism, including grants for newsrooms
- Social media giant said some of the money will be spent on ‘local’ content that has been hard hit in the digital age
Facebook says it is investing US$300 million over the next three years in local news programmes, partnerships and other initiatives.
The money will go towards reporting grants for local newsrooms, expanding Facebook’s programme to help local newsrooms with subscription business models and investing in charities aimed at supporting local news.
The move comes at a difficult time for the news industry, which is facing falling profits and print readership. Facebook, like Google, has also been partly blamed for the decline in newspapers’ share of advertising dollars as people and advertisers moved online.
Campbell Brown, Facebook’s head of global news partnerships, acknowledged the company “can’t uninvent the internet”, but said it wants to work with publishers to help them succeed on and off the social network.
“The industry is going through a massive transition that has been underway for a long time,” she said. “None of us have quite figured out ultimately what the future of journalism is going to look like, but we want to be part of helping find a solution.”