Facebook revealed today that it will be using another $100 million worth of assistance to regional newsrooms that are attempting to cover the COVID-19 pandemic, while that exact same pandemic is dealing a significant blow to their bottom lines
The company says the funding will consist of $25 million in grant financing for regional coverage, plus $75 million in marketing for news organizations all over the world.
” If people required more evidence that regional journalism is a vital civil service, they’re getting it now,” said Campbell Brown, Facebook’s vice president of worldwide news collaborations, in a blog post “And while nearly all organisations are facing adverse monetary impacts from this crisis, we acknowledge we’re in a more privileged position than the majority of, and we want to assist.”
Previously this month, Facebook revealed a preliminary $1 million in grants to assist fund protection of the pandemic, which it states today supported 50 newsrooms in the U.S. and Canada. Examples consist of South Carolina’s Post and Carrier (which will use the cash to cover the travel expenses and remote work essential to broaden its coverage into backwoods), the Southeastern Missourian (funding remote work and contingency plans for delivering news to senior readers) and El Paso Matters (hiring freelance reporters and translators).
This funding begins top of the $300 million that Facebook devoted to regional news in 2015, along with the $100 million in grants for small businesses impacted by COVID-19 that it announced previously this month.
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