In an ongoing effort to strengthen the relationship between media, news organizations and journalists, Facebook has introduced The Journalism Project.
Facebook will work to help train journalists on how to use Facebook as a reporting tool and assist the public in figuring out how to identify fake news. This initiative will also help journalists to communicate with the readers outside of Facebook and avoid getting lost in the news feed.
It would also help build new products and open access to tools that will help their teams, while also educating the public on how to be good news readers.
In a press release by Facebook, they said that the the project primarily consists of 3 objectives:
1. Collaborative development of news products
This will focus on the products used by Facebook and the media outlets for news. It will help journalists an people from the media industry to work with Facebook in a better and streamlined way.
These include new storytelling formats from Facebook such as Live, 360, Instant Articles etc to better suit the needs of the journalists and to further work with on improving these services and how they present it to the public.
Meeting are regularly held with the media and Facebook’s publishing partners and with the Journalism Project, a better effort will be made to do so in the upcoming months. Facebook will also host and sponsor important journalism and publishing conferences.
2. Training & Tools for Journalists
Facebook is now conducting a series of e-learning courses on the products, tools and services by Facebook for journalists. They’ll be expanding these trainings to 9 different languages to make it easier for everyone.
More journalists will be hosted from around the world to discuss best practices so that they are able to discover information on Facebook’s platform, work there, engage and build audiences around their reporting. Training at scale for local newsrooms will also be provided.
The recently acquired CrowdTable will also be provided for free for the media partners that work with Facebook. New tools for Facebook Live will also be made available to help journalists to find and share news and connect them with their audiences.
3Û” Training & Tools for Everyone
The final focus of Facebook is on its readers with an emphasis on promoting media literacy. Facebook will be working on new ways to help give people information so they can make smart choices about the news they read. This will also be done in direct partnership between journalists.
Facebook again pointed out their efforts to help reduce fake news and hoaxes. Methods have been implemented for people to report fake news and to stop it from spreading. Further improvements have been made in this regard with Facebook adopting a much stronger algorithm for detecting fake news and hoaxes.
This is just the beginning of the efforts from Facebook’s part. The Facebook Journalism Project will serve as a hub for their efforts to promote and support journalism.
