Facebook, Canadian Press agree on deal to create reporting jobs
Tech giant vows $1M for news agency to hire staff
Facebook has struck an agreement with The Canadian Press that will create eight new reporting jobs.
The digital giant says it will provide $1 million through a one-year fellowship initiative to allow the news agency to hire, train, equip and provide salary and benefits for reporters to be added to its newsrooms from Halifax to Vancouver.
The jobs are to be posted immediately and reporters are expected to be in place by the fall.
“The stories that will be created by these journalists will be, of course, administered and managed entirely by CP editors for the benefit of our customers and so this will add a significant new volume of stories from different regions across the country,” CP president Malcolm Kirk said.
CP agreed to participate in the project only after ensuring it will promote the development and growth of Canadian journalism without influence from Facebook and that there will be no infringement on editorial independence, Kirk said. The partnership comes as Canadian publishers banded together last month to call on the federal government to force large international digital companies including Facebook and Google to share their advertising revenue with media companies, who have seen a heightened pace of advertising sales declines since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Facebook has invested nearly $9 million in Canadian journalism through various programs over the past three years and offers similar programs in other countries, said Kevin Chan, head of public policy for Canada for Facebook Inc.
“For us at Facebook, the important thing here is that we want to be supporting the news ecosystem,” he said.
Reporters hired under the Facebook and Canadian Press News Fellowship are to focus on local and regional news stories, but their work is to be assigned, edited and distributed by the news service with no input from Facebook.
The reporters will be able to write stories about any subject, including Facebook.