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Cripples newspapers, then gripes

Facebook, which has been blamed for killing local newspapers, is now confirming that there aren’t enough of them to supply its users with the local news they want to read.

Last year, the giant social network headed by Mark Zuckerberg launched a service called “Today In” that’s now available in 400 cities across the US.

But Facebook admitted Monday that 40 percent of Americans live in places where there aren’t enough local news stories to support it. The tech giant deems a community unsuitable for “Today In” if it cannot find a single day in a month with at least five news items available to share.

“Facebook, after demolishing local news, they’re now worried that they don’t have enough of it on Facebook,” noted one news veteran.

About 100 publishers, academics, investors and technologists are gathering in Denver on Tuesday to wrestle with problems that have dogged the local news industry and to determine what can be done to save it.

Facebook, often criticized as one of the villains in the local news collapse, is joining with the Knight Foundation and the Online Publishers Association to convene the two-day conference.

It’s part of Facebook’s three-year, $300 million effort unveiled in January to help support local news, although Facebook is quick to point out that it is not the sole sponsor.

Campbell Brown, a former news anchor at NBC and CNN and the current head of local news partnerships for Facebook, frankly warned magazine publishers last month that they could not count on Facebook to solve their traffic problems.

Brown said Facebook is working with publishers to solve other problems such as how to sell their own digital and print subscriptions via Facebook platforms.

“The first step to solving a problem is measuring it,” said a statement from Jimmy O’Keefe, product marketing manager of Facebook’s “Today In” local news aggregator, and Josh Marbry, lead of Facebook’s local news partnerships.