Facebook says it will spend $5M on multi-year deals with 25 local journalists for its Bulletin newsletter
Facebook Inc (FB.O) has chosen 25 local independent journalists to be paid out of a $5 million pot to write for its newsletter site Bulletin through multiyear deals, the company told Reuters on Thursday. Tweets: @dannypanderson , @rmac18 , @rmac18 , and @eculliford See also Mediagazer Tweets: @dannypanderson : And now all the “we need to support journalism people” will be screaming into the internet “NO NOT LIKE THIS!” And I am one of those people. https://twitter.com/... Ryan Mac🙃 / @rmac18 : V funny to me that everyone is like “we have zoom fatigue!” and Facebook was like “ok strap this computer to your face and step into the metaverse, baby!” Ryan Mac🙃 / @rmac18 : The last time Facebook made a serious push around this, the company demoed it with Zuckerberg's avatar touring a disaster stricken Puerto Rico. So I guess this is progress. https://twitter.com/... Elizabeth Culliford / @eculliford : NEW: Facebook has now chosen 25 local journalists to be paid out of a $5 million pot to write for its new newsletter site Bulletin through multiyear deals https://www.reuters.com/... See also Mediagazer
Context & Ripple Effects
Bulletin launched in late June with dozens of recruited writers across sports and finance (the rollout followed an April pledge of $5M for local journalists covering communities of color). Today's announcement converts that pledge into named contracts: 25 local journalists on multiyear deals paid from the same pot.
The playbook echoes Facebook's earlier move to pay news partners up to $3M a year for placement in its News tab, which made platform licensing fees a real revenue line for publishers — and a line item Facebook could pull when priorities shifted, as it did when Meta began reallocating resources away from the News tab and Bulletin.
First-order effects
- The 25 selected local journalists get guaranteed multi-year income independent of subscription economics, and Bulletin gets exclusive local-news inventory to differentiate its writer roster at launch.
Second-order effects
- The precedent pressures other newsletter platforms and tech companies to offer comparable guaranteed contracts rather than pure revenue-share, since Facebook demonstrated it can outbid subscriptions for talent.
Third-order effects
- Meta's subsequent retreat from Bulletin shows platform-funded journalism is hostage to each company's product strategy, and the CJR analysis of Meta's Journalism Project — $29.4M across 564 organizations since 2018, with 43% receiving just $5K — suggests such programs are PR-scale grants rather than durable publisher revenue.
The trend: Platform-funded journalism runs on product-strategy cycles: Facebook pays for content to seed a new surface, then withdraws when the surface is deprioritized, leaving grantees exposed.