Google's Initiatives to Fund Journalism, Facebook Reassesses

Google has announced two new programs related to its Google News Initiative, the latest development in its ongoing bid to provide financial support to the news media ecosystem, as the tech giant faces increasing scrutiny from regulators across the globe. First, the Google News Initiative officially opened applications for its Global News Equity Fund, an international program designed to bring more diversity and equity to the news industry. Through the program, news organizations of between one to 50 employees, producing original news for minority audiences, can apply for funding to spend however they choose. Google declined to share the exact size of the purse or number of potential recipients, but the company expects the multimillion-dollar pot to finance hundreds of news outfits, said LaToya Drake, head of media representation at the Google News Initiative. The news wing of Google also announced the first round of recipients for The Data-Driven Reporting Project, a partnership between the Google News Initiative and the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications at Northwestern University. The funding awards $1 million to help journalists serve local or underrepresented communities, and the 22 winners come from across the U.S. and Canada. The new financial commitments to the journalism industry come as the relationship between publishers and platforms shows signs of shifting once again. Google and Facebook have both pledged hundreds of millions in funding to news organizations across the U.S., but Facebook has begun reassessing the scope and nature of its financial commitments to the news industry, as The Information first reported. The redoubled investment in news from Google reflects a diverging set of strategies from the two tech companies, as both look to navigate antitrust and privacy-minded reform. “Facebook is taking a different approach than Google is taking,” Drake said. “The Google News Initiative, with its $300 million commitment to journalism, has not changed. The same question continues to be of concrete importance: How do we support the news industry?” The Google News Initiative Is Putting $25 Million Toward Fighting Fake News on YouTube Two tech companies, two strategies In 2021, Facebook and Google cumulatively accounted for 52% of the international digital advertising market, according to Insider Intelligence, and their dominance has inspired pushback from both antitrust watchdogs and news publishers themselves. The two tech platforms have responded with a variety of tactics, including fighting legislation, striking settlements and arranging payments to select publishers. Similar to the Google News Initiative, Facebook launched its Facebook Journalism Project in 2017 to provide financial and technical support to the journalism industry. In 2019, it pledged to spend $300 million on the effort over the course of three years, and in March 2020 the program committed another $100 million to help publishers navigate the pandemic. Taken together, these efforts—an international blend of stick and carrot depending on the circumstance—have slowed regulations, but not derailed them. Now, signs of a change in strategy appear afoot. Facebook, citing the low level of interest its users have in news content, has consistently reduced the visibility of such content on the platform over the last few years. As the company devotes its attention to engineering the metaverse, while simultaneously trying to mimic its rival TikTok, the social platform has begun reevaluating whether it will continue paying publishers to use its News tab. For Facebook, the headache of working with publishers appears to have reached a point of diminishing returns. "We've always been clear that news discovery is a small part of the Facebook experience for the majority of people who use the platform and we can’t guarantee traffic," said Meta spokesperson Erin Miller. "In fact, news article links only make up about 4% of what people see in Feed—and people tell us they don’t want political content to take over their experience. We also recently renamed ‘News Feed’ to ‘Feed’ to better reflect the diverse types of content people see and engage with on Feed." Google, however, cannot so easily distance itself from the value it derives from news publishers: a search engine unable to surface the news of the day would find itself incapable of answering many of its users’ inquiries. As a result, while Facebook has shown signs of lessening its involvement with the news media, Google has redoubled its commitments. Prebid, of Header Bidding Fame, Sees Its Ranks Swell as Publishers Seek Shop Talk In addition to launching the Global News Equity Fund and the Data-Driven Reporting Project, last week the search giant signed a deal with French legislators to pay publishers a licensing fee to use their content. It also announced the return of Google News to Spain after the country changed its copyright law, ending an eight-year hiatus—and has redesigned the Google News platform in June to allow for greater personalization, based on interests and geography. These changes do not suggest an about-face in policy from Google, but rather a pragmatic understanding of the value journalism brings to the company. After all, people click through Google Search and Google News results to publishers' websites more than 24 billion times per month, according to the company. “Thanks to a whistleblower that exposed to the Wall Street Journal Facebook’s many months of planning and executing a blockage of news content and causing chaos in Australia, I don’t believe their plans or executives have any remaining credibility,” said Jason Kint, chief executive at Digital Content Next, a trade group for digital content producers. “Google, on the other hand, is clearly trying to win favor as global pressure continues to grow in checking its market power and any abuse of it.”

Platforms

Google Launches New Initiatives to Fund Journalism, While Facebook Reassesses

The Global News Equity Fund will split millions in funding between hundreds of winners

Mark Stenberg

About

Subscriptions

Events

Publications

WORK SMARTER - LEARN, GROW AND BE INSPIRED.

Subscribe today!

Mark Stenberg