FB’s algorithms at root of media losses

THE former editor of The Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, a one-time leading digital news crusader, has sounded a strong warning about the threat Facebook poses to news publishers.

He says the social networking site sucked up nearly £20 million (R375m) of the newspaper’s digital advertising revenue last year.

Rusbridger, now principal of Lady Margaret Hall College at Oxford University, said that before he left in May last year The Guardian had forecast online revenues of £100m.

In the end, the newspaper’s digital turnover was £81.9m, down 2.3 percent on that in 2014.

Speaking at the Financial Times Weekend Live Festival in London earlier this month, Rusbridger said The Guardian had not achieved its projected figure “because it all went to Facebook”.

Rusbridger had been editor of The Guardian from 1995.

A Guardian spokeswoman declined to comment. At the time that it published its annual report in July, sources at the newspaper said online giants, including Google and Facebook, were hoovering up advertising spending.

“At the time I left we were just about managing sustainability,” Rusbridger said.

Facebook changed everything, not through anyone’s fault, but just by its being a behemoth that began taking 85 cents in every advertising dollar. “It’s been a Force 12 hurricane.” Rusbridger said Facebook did present some opportunities for publishers, but “they are taking all the money” because “they have algorithms we don’t understand, which are a filter between what we do and how people receive it”.

“This is going to get worse because they have a means of distribution we simply can’t cope with.

“The more people switch on to these devices, the more problematic that question is going to get.”

However, Facebook “is a brilliant company … there’s no point in whingeing about it”, Rusbridger added.

“Google is a brilliant company, too. (Facebook and Google’s) presence does mean, though, you have to adapt your business model not just for the things that are changing year on year, but almost month to month.” The Guardian announced losses of £69m earlier this year.

While he was editor, Rusbridger’s vision of a free and far-reaching website expanded The Guardian’s readership without achieving a corresponding rise in income.