Facebook’s Journalism Project goes after Local News with “Today In”

After last year’s U. S. presidential election, many people pointed fingers at Facebook’s Journalism Project spreading fake news that ended up helping the election of Donald Trump.  Since the debacle of its everybody-shares news service, Facebook has been working on ways to thwart the spread of “fake news.”  Up to this point, they have a solution that only allows posts from a selected group of publishers approved by Facebook.  Unfortunately, that takes away the oh-so-newsworthy breaking story of you filming the firemen rescue of your neighbor’s cat in the tree.

The latest effort for the social media app to take over our lives is to provide local news to those who identify with a certain locale.  Facebook is testing a program called “Today In” that will allow for local news from “approved publishers” to be fed into the site to share local information, emergency updates, and information central to the community.  Facebook’s News Partnerships Team will approve local news sources.  This division is overseen by former NBC news anchor Campbell Brown.  In Atlanta, I would assume this would include The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, The Atlanta Business Chronicle and more.  The question is whether it will include the many local online news sources and industry specific publications. 

Once again, the question is how the publishers will benefit from this feed.  Will the added visits boost the subscriber base for the publications to monetize through advertising or will Facebook use the service to compete with the publication for the local advertiser and his limited dollars.  Or will they share.  Oh wait…they never share.

Test cities for the program are: New Orleans, LA; Little Rock, AR; Billings, MT; Peoria, IL; Olympia, WA; and Binghamton, NY. Facebook says they want to roll this out to mores cities and allow users to follow local cites they don’t current live in.  This capability reminds me of the Andy Griffith episode when the stranger moves to town and suddenly knows everybody’s name and all their information.  He had subscribed to the local paper for years all with the intention of retiring to Mayberry.

Local news is a needed entity and the way publications have had to cut staff is a threat to community.  If this can provide the funds to support more local reporting and editting  eaditing editing, it will be a much-needed service.