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Facebook moves into local news market in the UK

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By John Glenday, Reporter

April 13, 2021 | 4 min read

Facebook News is pursuing more granular current affairs coverage by surfacing regional stories of local interest alongside big stories of the day sourced from national publications.

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Facebook has moved to push local news stories to the front of its news coverage

An all-new local news section will cluster content by geography, enabling users to see at a glance what is happening within their home town or city simply by adding that location to the feed. Users will also be served a daily diet of content related to the location settings on your Facebook profile.

Facebook tightens grip on UK news

  • The localization launch follows the introduction of Facebook’s dedicated news section in the UK earlier this year when the social platform allocated a dedicated feed for curated news sourced from established publishers.

  • The content licensing arrangement sees Facebook pay out millions of dollars to its publishing partners – a deal lauded by Facebook as an example of how it can ’support the industry in building sustainable business models’.

  • With today’s news, Facebook is now taking that feature a step further, pushing more relevant content to people based on their location, removing the need for individuals to manually connect with local publishers.

  • Instead of connecting with multiple news outlets, members can utilize the ’add location’ to receive notifications of stories within any town or city of interest.

  • Promoting the change, Sarah Brown, Facebook’s head of news partnerships for Northern Europe, said: “With this new feature on Facebook News we want to drive traffic to local sites, helping publishers reach new audiences.”

Why does it matter?

  • Facebook’s embrace of localism can be set against a backdrop of intense scrutiny over its relationship with the media industry, a brewing confrontation that recently came to a head in Australia where the tech giant was briefly engaged in a stand-off over reimbursing publishers for content.

  • The episode saw Facebook initially blockade Australian derived news articles, only to backtrack after reaching an accommodation with the Australian government.

  • Seeking a more conciliatory position, Facebook has been at pains to showcase its support for struggling local news vendors through its Community News Project, a £2.25m annual training fund to recruit reporters across the UK which has just been extended for another year.

Facebook News rolls out local news section in the UK

  • Hundreds of local and national news outlets have already signed up to Facebook News, opening up new revenue and audience channels for media outlets.

  • The local news section was introduced successfully in the US last year to provide a more complete picture of what is happening in the world.

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