Between fake news and publishers struggling to keep a loyal
connection to their readers, Facebook’s relationship with the journalism
business is a bit strained right now. So today Facebook is revealing
its roadmap of upcoming news features that it calls “The Facebook Journalism Project” to make its commitment to the industry clear.
These future launches include digest packages of Instant Articles
that users can subscribe to, free trials for paid subscriptions,
hackathons with publishers’ development teams, additional Facebook
tutorials for journalists, PSAs to promote news literacy and combat
misunderstanding of fake news, and more work to prevent hoaxes from
spreading.
Facebook is also now giving away access to CrowdTangle, the
journalism tool startup it acquired that helps reporters sift through
trends, measure their social posts, and identify sources and
influencers. Plus, for the first time, journalists who post from their
standard user profile will be able to see basic analytics on the videos
they share, like a stripped-down version of the Insights tool offered to
Facebook Pages.

This initiative could assist publishers with fostering lasting
relationships with readers outside of Facebook and avoid getting lost in
the feed. Meanwhile, it could help them build new products and open
access to tools that aid their teams, while educating the public on how
to be good news readers.
Facebook’s director of product Fidji Simo tells me “we’ve really
heard it loud and clear that [publishers] want a deeper lever of
collaboration, not just in partnerships but in product and engineering.”
Most importantly, the Facebook Journalism Project could help prevent
publishers from being commoditized such that all that matters is the
content people consume on Facebook, not who wrote it.
Giving Publishers Back Their Mojo
When Facebook launched Instant Articles in May 2015, it heralded a
way for publishers to beat slow loading times on mobile where users were
increasingly reading news. Instead of waiting up to 10 seconds for an
outside website to load, Facebook would host the stories inside its own
app in a standardized, “readable” format that would load…instantly.
On a per unit economic basis, this looked like a big win for
publishers. More users wanted to click their stories, and fewer bounced
before they loaded. Even if Facebook restricted what could be shown and
how many ads could appear in the Instant Articles causing publishers to
earn less per view, they were getting enough views to make up for it.

Instant
Articles, on the left, previously offered less style customization and
business opportunities than a publisher’s traditional website
But the hidden, second-order effect was that publishers had their
identities sterilized. Instead of people reading on their websites with
their custom branding, unique visual style, and heavy promotion of their
other stories, the Facebook-hosted Instant Articles from different
outlets looked largely identical.
This deteriorates the connection between publisher and reader, threatening to turn content creators into merely interchangeable ghostwriters.
Over time, it could lead people to just haphazardly read whatever was
in their News Feed, rather than seeking out certain publishers, visiting
their homepages directly, paying for their subscriptions, and attending
their events.
Improving News From Every Angle
That’s why two of the new features bolded below from the full list should be the most exciting for the journalism industry:
- Story packages
- Investing in local news
- Subscription trials
- Facebook + publisher team hackathons
- Facebook journalism training courses for reporters such as how to use Live
- Ability to designate non-admins as contributors who can broadcast Live from a Page
- Bringing the Live video API’s capabilities to user profiles
- Free CrowdTangle access
- Expanded partnership with First Draft Partner Network for finding eyewitnesses
- Public Service Announcements promoting news literacy
- Additional features to fight fake news.
While Facebook is staying vague on the exact designs of
some of these changes because it’s still hammering out the best way to
build them, these two have big potential.

Facebook’s new Head Of News, former TV anchor Campbell Brown
Packages of Instant Articles will allow users to click
through a cover story on the News Feed and then choose between several
of the outlet’s stories, potentially based around a theme or as a digest
of the day’s biggest news. Users can subscribe to be notified when
these digests are released. This “packages” feature is currently being
tested with th Washington Post, Fox News, El Pais and the Hindustan Times.
Another feature will let Instant Articles publishers include a box
where users can sign up for a free trial of their paid subscription.
Facebook is testing this with
German news organization BILD.
If Facebook provides more ways to create and fund high quality
journalism, its News Feed will remain informative and entertaining
despite the difficulties with earning money as a publisher in the modern
age. Facebook just hired Campbell Brown as its head of news.
Now instead of just promising its publisher partners that Facebook
cares about journalism, she’ll have a roadmap of upcoming features to
prove it.
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