Some past covers of TheBurg.
Facebook and Google seem to have a case of the guilties.
Both have been accused, with good reason, of making us a less informed, more gullible public by hosting and spreading fake news and by degrading and destroying local news. They now want to make amends.
So, Facebook is launching on an initiative that will better highlight local news and events to its users. Google, it was reported last week, has begun piloting something it calls “Bulletin,” an app that it claims can turn anyone into a local news reporter.
Sigh.
I understand why these tech behemoths are seeking solutions from within their own platforms and staffs. Shouldn’t they try to undo the damage they have done? And, besides, it’s not surprising that these technology companies believe that the solution to problems caused by technology is more technology.
However, both Facebook and Google are misdiagnosing the sick man that is local news and, thus, applying the wrong salve. Local news is suffering not because people can’t find it, and a solution is certainly not having random residents periodically shoot raw video at city council meetings.
Local news is in a state of eclipse because it’s become impoverished.
Facebook and Google have contributed profoundly to the financial collapse of the local news industry, as advertising dollars that used to stay in the local community, supporting local journalism, are now going to them.
Now, it’s not all their fault. Newspapers themselves, particularly chain-owned properties, which constitute the majority of local papers, have made many mistakes attempting to respond to the rise of digital news. I’ll also lay some of the blame on advertising agencies, which have fallen in love with their digital metrics and high-margin social media strategies at the expense of spending their clients’ money with the local paper.
Nonetheless, copious ad dollars are now being directly funneled to a few square miles in and around Menlo Park, Calif., enriching Facebook, Google, et al, instead of staying in cities and towns throughout the United States, supporting professional reporters who do the hard, thankless work of holding public officials accountable, reporting on poverty, crime and business, and generally keeping their communities informed.
If they really want to solve the existential crisis facing local reporting, Facebook and Google need to stop messing around with silly, feckless Band-Aids. Moving up local events in a Facebook newsfeed or uploading a few random, citizen-made videos to another Google platform will do nothing to aid the cause of responsible, consistent and professional local journalism.
But here’s what will. Facebook, Google and other tech giants can and should directly support and fund the hyper-local journalism that they claim they want to save.
There are, I believe, two simple ways to do this.
First, they should commit to putting an additional reporter or two into independent (non-chain) newsrooms across the country, focusing on smaller communities where one or two more journalists would make a world of difference. They could even brand them—call them Google or Facebook-endowed reporting positions or some such—thereby linking their companies with this great cause.
Secondly, they should start an incubator that would offer start-up capital, guidance and assistance for qualified journalists who want to begin newspapers (paper and digital) in underserved communities across the United States.
These may sound like wild ideas, but Facebook and Google seem intent on flushing their money anyway. So, why not spend it on something that might actually work, that could make a real difference? Why not return it to the communities it’s been taken from?
For the tech companies, such an effort also would be a public relations windfall, allowing them to reclaim their good names, lauded long after “Bulletin” inevitably flops and fades to obscurity. They even could invoke the spirit of Andrew Carnegie, the face of our prior Gilded Age, who managed to rehabilitate his soiled reputation by taking his vast wealth and spreading knowledge (libraries) in community after community across the country.
“Hey, who’s that young guy covering the school board meeting? Oh, that our new Facebook reporter.”
Repeated in hundreds of cities and towns across America.
So, now, I’ll venture over to my mailbox and wait for that check so that I can fill the first Google-endowed reporting position at TheBurg. Should I send her to the zoning board meeting? The community forum on education reform? An interview with the mayor, with the new business owner?
Alas, I know that I’m far likelier to receive a push notification that “Bulletin” is now available in my area. But perhaps, before Facebook and Google waste more of their money on some pointless venture dreamed up by the usual suspects in Conference Room 3, Building C, Palo Alto, Calif., they should ask a hyper-local journalist laboring in the vast provinces what might actually help.
Lawrance Binda is editor in chief of TheBurg. And, while he realizes that this proposal is self-serving, he also knows that the loss of money, not a loss of readership, integrity or interest, is the cause of the crisis facing local journalism.
