Facebook is struggling with Today In, its feature curating local news, because 40% of Americans live in places that do not have enough local news coverage
turns out after you help kill off local newspapers, there's no original local reporting left to steal. #newsdeserts http://apnews.com/... Anand Giridharadas / @anandwrites : Facebook complains about problem caused by Facebook. http://twitter.com/... Mitch Pugh / @scmitchp : Just to be clear: These “news deserts” are measured by how much is being shared to Facebook, not necessarily whether there is news there. I'm sure there is some correlation but as others have pointed out there are many holes here. http://twitter.com/... Anthea Watson Strong / @antheaws : As we've built Today In, we've started to generate a very detailed map of local news inventory— where it exists and where it doesn't. Today we're releasing our data on news deserts to four academics- @businessofnews, @nicco, @pmnapoli + @docmattweber http://facebookjournalismproject.com/ ... Matthew Weber / @docmattweber : Incredibly excited to be a part of this data-sharing partnership, and to see what more we can learn about local news ecosystems! @UMN_HSJMC #localnews http://twitter.com/... Tom Glaisyer / @tglaisyer : Look forward to seeing the analysis of this data by @businessofnews, @nicco, @pmnapoli + @docmattweber. Knowing the contours of the problem will be very useful. Thanks for all your work on this @antheaws + team. http://twitter.com/... See also Mediagazer
Context & Ripple Effects
Facebook built Today In on an assumption it never tested at scale: after testing the feature across six US cities and then boosting local publishers in the News Feed based on geographic click patterns, the company is finding that in much of the country there simply isn't enough original local reporting to fill a daily local-news module. The 40% figure — the share of Americans living in under-covered areas — turns a distribution product into a supply problem.
The reaction captured in the piece cuts two ways: critics like Anand Giridharadas frame it as a platform complaining about a shortage it helped create, while former local editor Mitch Pugh notes the deserts are measured by what gets shared to Facebook, not by whether reporting exists there — a methodological caveat the Today In team is addressing by handing its data to four academics.
First-order effects
- Today In cannot deliver a consistent local experience for roughly 40% of American users, limiting the feature to metro areas with surviving newsrooms and forcing the team to release its news-deserts dataset to outside researchers rather than defend the map itself.
- Local publishers inside covered metros get a curated distribution channel their desert counterparts have no equivalent of, widening the visibility gap between well-covered and thinly covered places.
Second-order effects
- A curation surface keyed to Facebook sharing metrics rewards whatever local content already circulates on the platform, pressuring remaining local outlets toward shareable formats over accountability reporting — the exact trade-off Pugh's critique flags.
- The supply shortfall foreshadows the strategic retreat visible three years later, when Meta reallocated resources away from the News tab and Bulletin toward creators — news products whose raw material was scarce were the first to lose internal sponsorship.
Third-order effects
- If aggregation products keep scaling faster than local reporting, the industry splits into covered metros where platforms amplify existing newsrooms and news deserts where no amount of algorithmic curation substitutes for reporters — making original local journalism a geography lottery.
- Platform-built news surfaces become dependent on measuring engagement signals as a proxy for news supply, which means the companies least equipped to judge local journalism end up defining where 'news' exists — a structural conflict regulators and funders of local news would inherit.
The trend: Platforms building curated news products on top of a shrinking local-news base are discovering that distribution technology cannot manufacture the supply it depends on.