Facebook shares news desert data to improve local news

Facebook is once again touting its attempt to solve a problem it helped create. 

The company announced Monday that it would provide select researchers access to information about news deserts, which are places with little to no local news coverage. The research sharing is part of the Facebook Journalism Project, the company’s initiative to enable the spread of high quality journalism and news literacy on Facebook.

Researchers at the University of North Carolina found that the U.S. has lost more than 1,800 newspapers since 2004. 

Local newsrooms have disappeared across the country in the face of lowered subscription and advertising revenue, corporate consolidation, and the rise of the tech giants. In 2017, Google and Facebook took half of all advertising revenue worldwide. They’re also expected to take 83 percent of every new dollar spent on advertising in the future. Facebook and Google’s growing piece of the advertising pie has meant less money for news organizations of all stripes.

In Facebook’s own news desert research, it found that one in three Facebook users live in an area without a significant amount of local news coverage. Facebook made this determination by judging whether an area produced enough local news to participate in Facebook’s local news dissemination program, “Today In.” 

According to Facebook, this state of affairs is mostly consistent across the country: “35% of users in the Midwest, Northeast, and South – and 26% in the West – live in places where we can’t find much local news on Facebook,” the report says. Facebook will be sharing more data with UNC’s Penny Abernathy, Harvard’s Nicco Mele, Duke’s Phil Napoli and University of Minnesota’s Matthew Weber.

Facebook announced a commitment to strengthening the creation and spread of local news in January 2019 when it pledged to invest $300 million into “news programs, partnerships and content.” Some of that cash stays within Facebook, funding its local news Accelerator pilot program.

On Monday, Facebook also pledged to fund the Facebook Journalism Project Community Network, a program that offers grants to newsmakers beefing up local coverage, in partnership with the the Lenfest Institute for Journalism. According to Poynter, Facebook will “give out just over a total of 100 grants for between $5,000 and $25,000 for projects that build community through local news.” 

Facebook’s stated commitment to local news in particular and journalism as a whole has long seemed a bit, well, rich. Mark Zuckerberg has shown a misunderstanding of and contempt for media industry practices. Facebook has faced reports of using its relationship with fact-checking organizations as an exploitative PR play. And the dominance of digital advertising by Facebook, along with Google, contributed to the root of problem — the defunding and loss of quality news across the country — that it is now purporting to help solve.

There’s also the fact that the ~$300 million Facebook has pledged towards journalism initiatives represents, oh, half of one percent of the $55 billion Facebook earned from advertising revenue in 2018. 

Facebook’s efforts in local news are a net positive. But it’s also a half of a percent bandage on a $55 billion problem.