Page 489 - The Case Lab Book

Not only do companies want to show you only the adverts you
want to see but also the news you want to see. BuzzFeed is an

ad agency which has a news agency wrapped around its

outside it makes all its money from the ad agency and then

uses the distribution it gets from its journalism to build its
audience which it then sells to advertisers.

Likewise, both Facebook and Google get their revenue streams

from advertising. But in the case of Facebook 80% of
Americans get their news from Facebook. But what does

Facebook actually offer? Does Facebook only show you the

news you want to see and if so, what impact does this have on
editorial freedom? The answer is that nobody knows how

Facebook chooses the things to put into users feeds. What

used to be an editorial job is now done by algorithms which

are rigorously protected.

Perhaps what publishers should be focusing on is that kind of

meaningful engagement with their news brands, better
serving a smaller stratum of readers willing to pay. This

however, pales against the tide of now-standalone newspaper

chains trying to cut their ways into the “newsrooms of the

future.”