San Francisco: Facebook is having trouble finding enough local news to feed its new journalism initiative, because hundreds of newspapers have shut down in the US. “About one in three users in the US live in places where we cannot find enough local news on Facebook to launch ‘Today In’,” Facebook wrote in a blog post on Monday.
In those “news deserts” – communities with little or no local reporting – Facebook hasn’t been able to find “five or more recent news articles directly related to these towns” for its news feature “Today In” that was launched in November last year. “In the last 28 days, there has not been a single day where we’ve been able to find five or more recent news articles directly related to these towns.
“This does not vary much by region: 35 per cent of users in the Midwest, Northeast, and South — and 26 per cent in the West a” live in places where we can’t find much local news on Facebook,” said the social networking company. “Today In” has been rolled out to over 400 cities in the US.
“We’re also announcing a new pilot programme, the Facebook Journalism Project Community Network, to support projects aimed at building community through local news,” said Facebook. According to Engadget, nearly 1,800 papers have shut down in the US since around the time Facebook came online 15 years ago. In January this year, the Facebook Journalism Project announced to invest $300 million in local newsrooms.