Facebook follows Google with funds to support journalism

— Facebook announced Tuesday that it will invest $300 million over three years to support journalism, with an emphasis on promoting hard-hit local news organizations.

The move, on the heels of a similar initiative by Google last year, comes with online platforms dominating the internet advertising ecosystem, making it harder for legacy news organizations to make a transition to digital.

“People want more local news, and local newsrooms are looking for more support,” Campbell Brown, Facebook’s vice president in charge of global news partnerships, said in a blog post.

“That’s why today, we’re announcing an expanded effort around local news in the years ahead.”

In the U.S., social media has overtaken print newspapers as a news source for Americans, according to a survey released last year by the Pew Research Center.

The survey report found 20 percent of U.S. adults say they often get news via social media, compared with 16 percent from newspapers.

Facebook, which has been criticized for enabling manipulation of its news feed, has consistently said it does not want to be considered a media organization that makes editorial decisions but wants to support journalism and efforts to fight misinformation.

It has funded fact-checking projects around the world, including one in partnership with AFP.

The move by Facebook follows the Google News Initiative unveiled last year by the U.S. internet search giant.

Ken Paulson, a former USA Today chief editor who heads the Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University, said the Facebook initiative was “a great move.”

“Local news media have suffered sig- nificant collateral damage from the enmity directed at national news organizations, and yet they’re the most critical to a functioning democracy,” Paulson said. “Every investment helps.”

But Nikki Usher, a George Washington University professor of media studies, said the effort “is a bit of smoke and mirrors because it’s hard to tell what’s really local for Facebook.”

Usher said the effort may end up aiding large regional newspapers and local TV stations but may not impact the under-75,000 circulation publications which make up a large part of the news ecosystem.