Facebook to Invest $300m in Supporting Local News

Post by ticmasta » Tue, Jan 15, 2019, 6:16 PM UTC

dqpb wrote: post #39

monkeynotes wrote: post #25

> Last year, we worked to better understand what kind of news people want to see on Facebook. This opening line is just all wrong. News isn't about 'what you want to see', writing news to garner clicks is basically another way of saying 'our news reporting is fundamentally biased'. Real journalism isn't entertainment. But, I get it, real journalism doesn't sell, people don't have time to understand world problems, do…

So who decides what's news worthy?

Post by gowld » Tue, Jan 15, 2019, 6:29 PM UTC

j-c-hewitt wrote: post #27

naravara wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The decline in local news likely plays a big part in the decline in American civic life and social capital. That said, $300M isn't nearly enough to even mitigate the damage Facebook does to American civic life simply by virtue of being a data-mining, misinformation spreading behemoth. Their business model is at cross purposes with the ideal of having an informed citizenry. The entire point of marketing and advertisin…

Name me a war the US entered that isn't World War II that wasn't coincident with a misinformation campaign published on dead tree legacy media. The truth is that mass media IS edutainment at best and completely misleading fiction most of the time. You get to pick two: fast, cheap, and good/true. If it is fast and cheap it is fake. If it is cheap and true it will take time to attain. If it is true and fast, it won't b…

Post by gowld » Tue, Jan 15, 2019, 6:34 PM UTC

porpoisely wrote: post #10

lquist wrote: post #4

Ah yes the bastion of journalistic quality that is local news...wait...what? FB gets a lot of flak for fake news and then decides to invest in local news? Why not in institutions that set the standard for journalism and bring accountability such as Pro Publica?

Pro Publica was created by billionaire bankers a little more than 10 years ago. They aren't in need of any funding. Also, it's a bit of a stretch to say that pro publica is the standard of journalism or accountability. Pro Publica is an advocacy institution.

Post by IronWolve » Tue, Jan 15, 2019, 6:36 PM UTC

CodeSheikh wrote: post #44

Or Facebook to Invest $300m in Influencing Local News. Facebook newsfeed model inherently works against local news and small guys (unless some certain piece goes viral once in a while). Local news outlet based out of some small locality does not have a huge follower base that gets Facebook's attention. This is just another PR stunt by Facebook.

Post by freehunter » Tue, Jan 15, 2019, 6:39 PM UTC

exotree wrote: post #64

freehunter wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very closely tied to my real-world identity so I'm not comfortable linking it here at this time. It's only interesting to the people living in/around my small town, to anyone else it would just look like a generic small town news website full of unimportant small-town topics.

Are you capturing these folks from FB through email sign-ups? Have seen a couple local news orgs successfully get people to visit their site directly by investing in email.