Facebook wants to help the news industry which is facing decline because of a dip in the revenue due to fall in economic activities due to the coronavirus pandemic. A week back Facebook had announced to aid local newsrooms in the US and Canada with $1 million. Facebook today revealed that they are planning to infuse another $100 million to aid the news industry.
Facebook understands that the local reporters are doing a great job by providing information related to the coronavirus. Most of the newsrooms are facing challenging times and due to cut in the ad spending by the corporate. The economic downturn is threatening the news industry which more or less depend on ads.
The Vice President of global news, Campbell Brown says: “The news industry is working under extraordinary conditions to keep people informed during the COVID-19 pandemic, at a time when journalism is needed more than ever, ad revenues are declining due to the economic impact of the virus.”
Facebook has decided to donate $25 million in emergency grants to local news portals. Another $75 million will be spent on marketing on local news portals . Such a grant has already been extended to 50 newsrooms in the U.S. and Canada.
This is not the first time that the social media giant has come to help the organizations in decline, earlier too the company had invested $300 million to help news companies through various programs
Facebook has also said that it will allow agencies to use the messenger service for information distribution.
