Where Is Facebook’s Journalism Funding Headed? Here’s What We Know

It’s hard to say exactly how much, but the rise of Google, Facebook and other social media companies clearly contributed to the tailspin the local news industry finds itself in, and many in the business are calling for a reckoning. Researchers have found digital platforms are at least partially to blame for the decline, and hundreds of newspapers across the country have filed antitrust lawsuits against Google and Facebook.

So it’s not too surprising that both companies have embarked on significant journalism philanthropy projects. Whether you see it as a “PR stunt,” or, as Nieman Journalism Lab’s Christine Schmidt put it, an effort “to make amends before it’s too late for local,” Facebook (now Meta) has pledged hundreds of millions since launching its Facebook Journalism Project in 2017 to help beleaguered outlets prosper in the digital age.

Two years after the launch, it pledged $300 million to support local news programs, partnerships and content development efforts, and when the pandemic hit, Facebook announced another $100 million for news outlets, this time in COVID-19 support. The project continues to expand, at least in terms of dollars pledged. Speaking to The Wrap, Meta’s head of news partnerships Campbell Brown said the rechristened Meta Journalism Project (MJP) had committed $600 million to news content since 2018 and is promising another $1 billion by 2024. “I am proud to say that over the last four years, we have become one of the largest funders of journalism in the world, and I think we take that responsibility really seriously,” she told the publication.

Meta has indeed become a big player in this arena, and yet, it’s difficult to say exactly how much the company has disbursed in actual dollars to nonprofits and news outlets, or how grantees can access this support. We reached out to Meta to get more details, but a representative declined to share how much the project has moved in total or to nonprofits since its inception.

This isn’t too surprising given the notoriously opaque world of corporate giving. Companies and their philanthropic arms often combine cash grants with in-kind support under the banner of big financial commitments, while offering little transparency around where, exactly, the money is flowing. And funders of all types — corporate and otherwise — have a penchant for announcing massive pledges that generate glowing press, then hedging when pressed about how much money has actually ended up in others’ checking accounts.

It will take a lot before the company is perceived as a net force for good in journalism, considering it’s one of the most controversial and least-trusted brands in the world. Even if you do tend to place blame on news outlets and other factors for the journalism industry’s decline, Facebook continues to draw fire for its role in the spread of misinformation.

That being said, the Meta Journalism Project has moved around $145 million that we can trace, and much of that support has been quite beneficial to recipients. Even with the uncertainty about what form it will take, a $1 billion commitment is something media nonprofits and news outlets ought to watch closely. Here’s everything we know about where this money has gone so far, and where it’s headed next.

Following the money

MJP isn’t a private foundation, so it doesn’t need to submit a Form 990 to the IRS, nor does its website have a grants database or contact information. While they are not mandated by law, these omissions will likely frustrate nonprofit leaders, especially in comparison to the relatively more transparent world of private philanthropy. (It should be noted that the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, an LLC, has a fantastic grants database.)

The MJP site says that since 2019, it has invested over $230 million globally “in support of local news.” The investments “comprise programmes that have been publicly announced, as well as ongoing support through the Community News Project, Accelerators, conferences, grants and event sponsorships.” Accelerator refers to Meta’s training program to help develop a sustainable business model for local news.

In other words, the company does include non-cash support when calculating its total allotment. Moreover, Meta’s overall funding figures include confidential licensing deals in which the company pays publishers like the New York Times and the Washington Post to license their content in Facebook’s news section. Meta also earmarks funding video content hosted on the video-on-demand service Facebook Watch.

In July 2021, The Wrap’s Antoinette Siu dug into the $600 million figure and found that “many of those dollars are hard to track, except in the most general terms. When broken down into the main categories mostly based in the U.S., the Wrap could only specifically verify the expenditure of roughly $122 million — barely one-quarter of the pledged sum — begging the question: Where is the money going?”

Siu determined that of this $122 million figure, Meta allocated $1.7 million through its Community Network Grant Program, which supports grantees “building community through local news,” and $100 million in COVID-related grants through that same program. The company also gave $16 million in grants to organizations like the Pulitzer Center and the American Journalism Project, and $5 million to fund Bulletin, Meta’s Substack-like publishing platform.

After scouring the press releases on MJP’s site recently, I came up with slightly higher, but similar numbers. I could account for $145 million in support, 92% of which was earmarked for COVID support.

MJP’s five programs

So the funding amounts are hazy, but we do know that MJP has five program areas. The first is Meta’s Accelerator, a global training program launched in 2018 that helps nonprofit and for-profit local news publishers build a sustainable business model. Participating outlets also receive grants.

In 2020, FJP announced it awarded a total of $5.4 million to 59 North American newsrooms that participated in the Local News Accelerator program focused on boosting subscriptions and memberships. In February, the Columbia Journalism Review’s Gabby Miller looked at how Examiner+, a digital news magazine that’s based in New York’s Hudson Valley Region and owned by Examiner Media LLC, boosted subscriptions as a result of its participation in the program. Publisher Adam Stone told Miller he went from feeling “mildly pessimistic” to “pretty optimistic” about the future of the publication.

In late March, Meta and two partners, the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY and the Local Media Association, announced that fourteen publishers of color from the U.S. and Canada will participate in the Video Business Accelerator, a tuition-free program aimed at teaching global newsrooms sustainable business strategies around video.

Currently, the MJP Accelerator program is not offering any training events. However, leaders can still glean takeaways from past sessions. For example, the MJP site currently features a white paper titled “10 Steps to Build a Thriving Reading Revenue Business.” Leaders can also join the MJP’s email list for regular updates.

Administered in partnership with the Lenfest Institute for Journalism, the MJP’s second program, Community Network, supports people and organizations aiming to build community through local news. This is the program that went on to provide emergency COVID relief to over 400 outlets in April 2020.

Around that time, I spoke with Tracie Powell, director of the Racial Equity in Journalism Fund at Borealis Philanthropy, who applauded Facebook’s efforts, telling me that the funding “can pay for one or two freelancers. It gives outlets the hope to keep pushing.” Facebook also pledged $75 million in ad spending with news outlets grappling with significant declines in their revenue. However, that 2020 cycle of COVID-related support was the most recent round of grantmaking made through the Community Network program, at least that we’re aware of.

MJP’s third program is Grants for New Organizations. All of the grants on this page refer to COVID-related funding in 2020 to organizations in the U.S., Asia, Australia, Europe, Latin America and South Africa. The page’s most recent news item refers to the $10.3 million the FJP gave 144 newsrooms in May 2020.

Offered in collaboration with the Reynolds Journalism Institute, MJP’s fourth program, the Instagram Local News Fellowship, is a 10-week summer program for journalism students to work as Instagram editors in local U.S. newsrooms. Of course, Meta owns Instagram, so this program is offering support for journalism within the “walled garden” of the company’s services. (Another example of this practice comes from Google, which launched its Google News Initiative in 2018 and provided pandemic-related support in the form of ad credits to outlets in the spring of 2020.)

The fifth program, Third-Party Fact-Checking, is an ongoing collaboration with the International Fact Checking Network to identify, review and rate viral misinformation across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

The MJP has also provided grants to the News Integrity Initiative, Arizona State University’s Journalism School, Report for America, Pulitzer Center, the Knight-Lenfest Local News Transformation Fund, and the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.

How does Meta stack up as a journalism funder?

In terms of philanthropy, MJP has moved a healthy amount of support to nonprofit organizations, a substantial portion of which flowed to besieged organizations during the early days of the pandemic. But it’s tough to say where the majority of the company’s hefty financial commitment to the news business is headed.

MJP’s site does not have a grants database, nor does the project have an open grantmaking program in the mold of some private foundations. Not great, but it’s got plenty of company there. While it has become common practice among large funders, most still don’t post all of their grants on their websites. Nor do most philanthropies accept unsolicited proposals.

When compared to its corporate funding peers with a footprint in the media industry, Meta has a mixed report card. The Scripps Howard Foundation, which is the funding arm of the W.W. Scripps Company, a broadcasting company headquartered in Cincinnati, is currently accepting grant requests. The Gannett Foundation is accepting applications for its Gannett Foundation Media Grant, which supports journalism education and training programs with a particular interest in “programs or projects that seek to encourage diversity in newsrooms and in coverage.” Neither foundation’s site has a grants database. The Thomson Reuters Foundation lists “Media Freedom” as a focus area, and while it doesn’t have a grants database, its site includes an annual report for 2020 listing grant recipients for that year.

The closest corporate analog to MJP is the Google News Initiative. The initiative’s site lacks a grants database, and does not break out how it has allocated its $300 million in support since its launch in 2018. The site primarily consists of research, case studies and resources designed in partnership with industry experts for leaders at news organizations.

What’s next

All things being equal, it’s more accurate to view the Meta Journalism Project — and, for that matter, the Google News Initiative — less as conventional grantmakers and more as middlemen, working to unearth exportable practices that help publishers build business models that can work within the digital news ecosystem the companies helped to create.

MJP has been particularly active on this front as of late. Last year, it partnered with LION Publishers to create the LION-Meta Revenue Growth Fellowship, which provides 12 news businesses with funding to make a new hire focused on growing revenue. In February, LION revealed some key findings surfaced across the first phase of the program.

A month later, the Report for America/Local Media Association Sustainability Lab, a partnership between the two organizations and Meta, announced a cohort of 19 nonprofit and for-profit newsrooms that will complete a six-month course on revenue generation strategies, including philanthropy. At the conclusion of the lab, the LMA and RFA will share best practices that can be applied across the news industry.

RFA also held an April 13 webinar looking at how local philanthropy and newsroom leaders create more sustainable models. The talk drew upon findings from a “Community News Funds” report that was made possible with support from Meta and the Lenfest Institute for Journalism.

This flurry of partnership-heavy activity is likely a harbinger of things to come as Meta works toward its $1 billion target by 2024.

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