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Facebook intends to spend around $300 million in the news industry over the span of 3 years as it faces criticism over its role in the decline of news publishers worldwide. While the investment is limited to U.S businesses, for now, it shows Facebook intention towards keeping publishers on the platform as the company devotes both time and money as well as the businesses being totally unrelated to Facebook.
The goals of the investment are as follows:
- Bolster resources for local reporting.
- Help research on how to use technology to improve news gathering.
- Create innovative products for news publishers.
- Recruit “trainee community journalists” and assign them in newsrooms.
- Fund a program modeled after Peace Corp which will place 1,000 journalists in local newsrooms over the next 5 years.
Facebook previously announced a $6 million fund for local companies in Britain and will focus on increasing support in the coming years. CEO of Local Media Consortium which consists of 80 news companies representing 2,200 outlets, Fran Wills “Facebook is making this investment to help support local media companies … open up new revenue streams that will support local journalism.”
These recent steps are Facebook’s bid towards clearing its name from fake news scandals and several other controversies.
