News is an international draw card, everyone knows that. However, in recent times newspapers are struggling to pay their bills, produce quality Content & support unbiased journalism. The reason is that the Internet, despite all its benefits, has an overload of news. Generally, this news is free, so people read it. As a result, most have stopped buying newspapers or subscriptions. Ultimately, this will result in the demise of quality journalism.
One of the biggest contributors to this downfall in quality journalism has been the ‘Share Button’. We’ve all probably used it at one point or another & shared an article from a news Website over Facebook (or other social media Sites). Few, if any of us, consider just how unsustainable this type of news aggregation is. Under this model no one is paying for Content. Social media is awash with free, unfiltered news, which might well be fake news.
Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg is aware the problem, which has led to Facebook reaching out to traditional media houses, to contain the reputation that the media giant has garnered lately — Fake News Giant, Political Campaign Influencing Media. These unfortunate tags are a direct result of the unrestricted, user-shared Content across the Website, which leaves ‘real news’ behind in the dust, & is causing thousands of users to abandon the platform.
Facebook has attempted to clean up its act — millions of ‘fake’ user accounts were closed earlier this year, improved algorithms for monitoring ‘live’ Content were employed, & now the social media giant is rolling out a ‘News Tab’, a tab for which it is paying as much as $3 million per provider, to offer quality news to users.
Facebook’s News Tab will have a distinct link of its own & will be separate from a user’s ‘News Feed’. Content is being sourced from some of the big-name players such as the Washington Post, & even smaller local news providers. Currently, the service, which is planned for international launch in the near future, is being “flight-tested” in a few select US cities, to a few thousand. Based on the success of this experiment, Facebook will decide whether to broaden the new service or not.
The big difference between this service & others is that Facebook has set up a newsroom manned by humans rather than robots (or algorithms). Real people will decide what’s included in each area’s service, with a ‘Today’s News’ section having prime position. Content such as health, sports, celebrity & entertainment will be categorized for easy reference, & personalized according to each user’s pre-selected preferences.
For now the service is only available for Facebook’s mobile app, but wider adoption is planned if the service is successful. Apple made a similar foray into the news arena recently, with a modicum of success.
Facebook has long been at loggerheads with various news providers such as News Corp CEO Robert Thomson, whom Mark Zuckerberg has, now won over. It will be interesting to see how well news providers maintain their independence under this new set of rules, after all it’s difficult to bite the hand that feeds you.
