Facebook wants to make journalism great again, releases lengthy plan

Facebook wants to help journalism thrive, and it has a plan.

Facebook on Wednesday announced "the Facebook Journalism Project," a new initiative that will include more collaboration with media outlets, new tools and training for journalists, as well as education efforts for the general public.

As part of the announcement, Facebook confirmed previous reports that it is bringing ad breaks to its videos, a potentially lucrative move for publishers and for Facebook.

"We know that our community values sharing and discussing ideas and news, and as a part of our service, we care a great deal about making sure that a healthy news ecosystem and journalism can thrive," wrote Fidji Simo, a director of product at Facebook, in a blog post announcing the program. "That’s why today we’re announcing a new program to establish stronger ties between Facebook and the news industry."

The release received mixed reviews from journalists who hope that Facebook will live up to its word of a greater commitment to journalism.

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The new initiative comes after Facebook was widely critiqued for its role in disseminating misleading news and propaganda around the election. Facebook has also been under fire from those in the media industry for its role in controlling access to readers without providing much in the way of monetization.

Facebook has pushed back against those critics while also beginning to introduce new ways for its users to report hoaxes.

Just last week, Facebook named a new head of news partnerships — Campbell Brown — who is tasked with serving as a liaison with publishers as well as the public face of Facebook's news efforts.

The initiative announcement is divided into three parts: collaboration, tools/education for journalists and tools/education for the public.

In collaboration, Facebook noted that it has heard publishers want to package stories together. Though light on details, the initial idea sounds something like a digital magazine or newspaper disseminated through Facebook.

"Publishers simply choose the articles and a cover image or video to package together in a set of Instant Articles," wrote Facebook product manager Josh Roberts in a blog post about the new magazine-like format.

Facebook published the image below as an example of what multiple stories from one publisher could look like.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

In addition to the new Instant Articles format, Simo said that Facebook also wants to help with improving the prospects of local news. Local media outlets have been particularly hard hit in recent years as the economics of media have changed.

As for tools and education for journalists, Facebook will be introducing a "certificate curriculum" in partnership with the Poynter Institute for Media Studies for journalists that complete its courses on how to best use Facebook.

Facebook will also be making CrowdTangle, the Facebook audience tracking startup that it recently bought, free for publishing partners.

As for the broader public, Facebook will be working with outside organizations "on how to better understand and to promote news literacy both on and off our platform to help people in our community have the information they need to make decisions about which sources to trust."

To that end, Facebook said it is working with Arizona State University to figure out how to support this goal, as well as working with the News Literacy Project to make public service ads on the issue.

Lastly, Facebook said it will continue efforts to "reduce the spread of news hoaxes — including ways for people to report them more easily and new efforts to disrupt the financial incentives for spammers."