news – Tech News

Facebook will remove its News tab and stop paying publishers for news

Facebook’s News tab launched in 2019 with millions of dollars in content deals for publishers (a reported $10 million for the Wall Street Journal, $20 million for the New York Times, and $3 million for CNN), but in April it’s going away for good. Meta says it will “deprecate” Facebook News in the US and Australia in April 2024, it won’t enter new commercial deals for news, and it “will not offer new Facebook products specifically for news publishers in the future.”
https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/29/24087220/facebook-news-tab-united-states-australia

Vice Media to halt publishing to namesake site, cut ‘several hundred’ jobs in restructuring

image via cbc.ca

A memo from Vice CEO Bruce Dixon, which was sent to staff on Thursday, explains that restructuring changes are being made "to adapt and best align our strategies to be more competitive in the long term." According to Dixon's memo, "it is no longer cost-effective for us to distribute our digital content the way we have done previously." He said Vice Media would seek to distribute its digital content by partnering with established media companies rather than publishing directly to its own site.
https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.7123068

Google and Canada reach deal to avert news ban over Online News Act

The agreement announced on Wednesday requires Google pay C$100m (£58m, $74m) annually, indexed to inflation, to news outlets. The statement said that Google would pay a "single collective" which would distribute the funds to eligible news agencies "based on the number of full-time equivalent journalists engaged by those businesses".
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-67571027

Once valued at $5.7 billion, Vice may now be headed for bankruptcy

Vice started as a punk zine in Montreal in the 1990s, expanding into a global media brand that included a print magazine, a vast digital content operation, a TV and film production studio, and its own TV network, Vice TV. It racked up prestigious journalism awards with its flagship program, Vice News Tonight. Vice’s brash reporting style helped define a new era of news, starting in the mid-2000s, that courted a younger audience, while drawing hundreds of millions of dollars in investments from establishment media companies, including Disney and Fox. The company, however, has failed to turn a profit for years, losing money and resorting to successive rounds of staff layoffs.
https://qz.com/once-valued-at-5-7-billion-vice-may-now-be-headed-for-1850394233