Journalism’s mission is clear, to divorce itself from all social media

The greatest thing to happen to journalism in the first few years of the 21st Century is now its greatest threat: social media.

And mostly I mean Facebook.

Oh, there is plenty of good journalism happening on social media platforms, new ways of telling stories, many of them not executed by those who would even consider themselves practicing members of the Fourth Estate. However, Facebook in particular has committed robbery for at least the better part of a decade, stealing audience from newspapers, tv stations and websites.

And it’s been our fault.

We led our audience to Facebook in the late 2000s, and then to Twitter. It drove significant growth for digital-first publications, and it had been a major marketing tool for local TV stations. It still is if used correctly. (Hint: subscribe to this site for regular updates on what’s working and what’s not in digital journalism marketing.) For what it’s worth, Twitter (now X) doesn’t really drive significant traffic to news sites, not relative to Facebook. It never has. However, bottom line: we journalists trained our precious audiences to use these tools to get their news.

This is our fault.

When Meta pulled news from the feeds of Canadians earlier this year, do you think it helped or hurt Canadian publications? It helped. One manager I talked to told me that losing Facebook wasn’t only the best thing for her website, it’s been one of the best things for journalism altogether.

I was jealous, and I found myself wishing that Meta would pull all news sites from Facebook here in the United States. It would make it so easy.

In its 2024 predictions for journalism, Nieman Lab writes that:

“The dependence on digital intermediaries has proved to be a Faustian bargain for the news industry. For years, search, social, and aggregators offered a cost-effective way to grow audiences, expand reach, and generate revenues. News was seemingly everywhere, so it was easy to stumble across the latest headlines or quirky story. Now, the challenge for news publishers is that audiences expect the news to come to them, rather than going directly to a news website.”

– Alfred Hermida

Experts much smarter than I have been begging media organizations to gather first-party data, to take control of their audience and to personalize the news experience for each consumer. This is essentially nurturing, if we look at this from the perspective of the content marketing funnel.

Instead, mostly, newsrooms publish and depend on social media, especially Facebook, to promote their work. The referral numbers go down, down, and down more, with no evidence or indication that it will ever return.

We still get some traffic, and that’s what keeps us posting to Facebook.

But if every post could come with a Surgeon General’s warning that “Consuming news information from this platform leads to misinformation, conspiracy and poor citizenship,” it would at least make me feel better about journalism still existing there.

The next time somebody tells you that they get all their news or any of it from Facebook, please tell them, “Love you, but stop. It only makes you dumber.”

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