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Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

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Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#111

Post by biztos »

WORMS_EAT_WORMS wrote: post #44

Let us be real, folks: - You are reading this comment. - You are likely highly or fairly paid. - You don’t pay for your news (to a partisan substack doesn’t count) Edit: Added likely to comment. Icing on the cake is if you consume almost all your news through Twitter / social media. Maybe stop clicking and reacting and instead stop and reflect your role in all this? Cold hard truth? We caused this problem, Facebook i…

I certainly pay for some of my news. I subscribe to two US newspapers, one international one, a trade newspaper, a glossy trade magazine, and two US weeklies that are among the heavy hitters of criticism and cultural writing, including a lot of news analysis and investigative reporting. And that’s just the paid subscriptions.

I wouldn’t be so quick to assume the HN audience, of all audiences, is penny-pinching serious journalism out of existence. I bet we even have a fair number of WSJ subscribers among us.

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#112

Post by slg »

afavour wrote: post #32

> There’s no evidence that the deal directly affects coverage in either the news or editorial departments. Before the Facebook News deal, the Times famously published an op-ed titled “It’s Time to Break Up Facebook,” by Chris Hughes, a cofounder of Facebook turned critic. And since the deal, columns from Tim Wu and Kara Swisher, among others, have been similarly critical. In December, the editorial board welcomed a l…

>The core conflict here isn't new, surely. Newspapers have taken advertising money from news-making companies since time immaterial.

And if you can find a viable alternative to this, your company will be worth hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars[1]. The internet has killed the classifieds business and commoditized news to the point that most people won't pay for it. Accepting advertising from potentially news-making companies is hugely important to keeping news organizations afloat. Vilifying it whenever it happens is potentially dangerous and we should really wait to level these accusations until there is actual evidence of wrongdoing.

[1] - https://www.axios.com/substack-andreessen-horowitz-newslette...

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#113

Post by WORMS_EAT_WORMS »

arrosenberg wrote: post #106
WORMS_EAT_WORMS wrote: post #44

Let us be real, folks: - You are reading this comment. - You are likely highly or fairly paid. - You don’t pay for your news (to a partisan substack doesn’t count) Edit: Added likely to comment. Icing on the cake is if you consume almost all your news through Twitter / social media. Maybe stop clicking and reacting and instead stop and reflect your role in all this? Cold hard truth? We caused this problem, Facebook i…

> Cold hard truth? We caused this problem, Facebook is a great scapegoat, and most here likely contributed to bigger issues with information distribution in one way or another through their employment. Yeah, yeah. We should all recycle more and drive less too; smokers should stop smoking, and the anxious should stop having anxiety. Users didn't create the system that exploits them, and it's very weird any time I see…

Fair point. But, what do you really want right now, blood?

Say we disappeared Facebook off the planet, do you really think — boom! — problem solved?

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#114

Post by [deleted] »

analognoise wrote: post #13
echelon wrote: post #5

I don't see how news is sustainable at current employment levels. Most papers cover the same stories from their own angle, but we don't need 1,000 duplicated takes. Social media bubbles headlines and links up from a potluck of sources, so there's no central paper to subscribe to and support. The end result is ad blocking everything, ignoring paywalls, and subscribing or paying no one. If I went to a paper's website i…

We absolutely need local papers, they're critical to uncovering the kind of small-town corruption that won't make the national news but still greatly impacts people. We can't seem to support this many journalists anymore - because FB and Google suck up the advertising revenue. Would breaking up big tech also bring back the local news room? That would be such a bonus.

[deleted]

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#115

Post by coldtea »

afavour wrote: post #32

> There’s no evidence that the deal directly affects coverage in either the news or editorial departments. Before the Facebook News deal, the Times famously published an op-ed titled “It’s Time to Break Up Facebook,” by Chris Hughes, a cofounder of Facebook turned critic. And since the deal, columns from Tim Wu and Kara Swisher, among others, have been similarly critical. In December, the editorial board welcomed a l…

>It's kind of a throwaway passage in the article but it feels like a crucial point. Maybe I'm wrong but "buying off" to me strongly suggests something along the lines of a bribe. We're going to give you this cash, nudge nudge, wink wink, maybe that negative stuff you print about us goes away. My question is: is this actually happening?

All the time. Using both direct bribes to journalists, friendly favors to the owners of the newspaper, and more often than not advertising money (which can be open from the company looking for favorable coverage itself, or through 1-2 layers of subsidies and shell companies which nobody can/will track).

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#116

Post by coldtea »

crazygringo wrote: post #66
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech blogs are regularly bribed for good coverage, and tech companies are known for doing it. Nobody bloody cares about integrity of journalism. The Verge has historically been very favorable to Apple and Google. Why? They get exclusive interviews with Google and Apple executives. An interview with Sundar Pichai is worth millions in ad revenue, and if a blog is too critical of a company, they won't get interviews. Of…

> Nobody bloody cares about integrity of journalism. There's a gigantic difference between tech blogs and the NYT or WaPo. Nobody expects tech blogs to exercise journalistic independence/integrity. People do with the NYT and WaPo, and loudly cancel their subscriptions when the believe that's violated.

>People do with the NYT and WaPo, and loudly cancel their subscriptions when the believe that's violated.

Nowadays, they mostly cancel their subscriptions when they get to read some opinion they don't like.

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#117

Post by jrochkind1 »

echelon wrote: post #28
ghaff wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have been talking about saving local news for more than 20 years. And the economics just don't work for the most part--whether in most cities or in smaller towns. I live in about a 7,000 person town. Let's say half the people would pay $20/year for a local paper--which we had at one point. That's wildly optimistic I know. Throw in some advertising. But I'm guessing you're still something under $100K/year. So y…

Exactly. I'll longbets anyone that downvoted me that we're going to see incredible consolidation and atrophy in the next ten years. It can't be stopped, and artificial means of preserving it won't work either as it no longer makes sense in the Internet age.

That's an easy bet, it's already started, been in progress for years now, and has been widely commented on.

"The number of newspaper newsroom employees dropped by 51% between 2008 and 2019, from about 71,000 workers to 35,000"

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/04/20/u-s-newsroo...

"Since 2004, hundreds of local newspapers have closed up shop. The author of a report on this trend said areas without a local paper suffer in a variety of ways."

https://www.wqad.com/article/news/local/drone/8-in-the-air/a...

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#118

Post by marnett »

WORMS_EAT_WORMS wrote: post #44

Let us be real, folks: - You are reading this comment. - You are likely highly or fairly paid. - You don’t pay for your news (to a partisan substack doesn’t count) Edit: Added likely to comment. Icing on the cake is if you consume almost all your news through Twitter / social media. Maybe stop clicking and reacting and instead stop and reflect your role in all this? Cold hard truth? We caused this problem, Facebook i…

I’ve been a proud paid subscriber of The New York Review of Books and Harper’s Magazine for several years. I advocate often just how worth the price is for quality, long form journalism.

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#119

Post by cratermoon »

It's always been the case that big advertisers influence the media that cover them. In the quaint old days there was a metaphorical "wall" between the business side and the news side, and neither could influence there other. In theory, that is. In practice, at a high enough level, the wall was less of a 16' fence topped with razor wire and more like police tape.

Of course, we don't live in the quaint old days. There's no distinction between news as journalism and news as business. Writers are measured not on how good their reporting is, but on how much "engagement" it gets, which is just a proxy for how profitable.

Is it a bribe or buyoff? Or just a failure of credibility? Newspapers used to have a position called the ombudsman to address just this scenario. The New York Times had a position called Public Editor. That position was eliminated in 2017[1]

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_editor

Re: Facebook gives money to America’s biggest news organizations

#120

Post by csours »

Internet has made 'information' extremely cheap. I think we as a society are just beginning to come to terms with the implications of cheap information: Cheap disinformation, loss of traditional gatekeepers, loss of friction that enabled value capture by news organizations, etc.
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