Facebook, Canadian Press strike deal to create journalism jobs

Facebook and The Canadian Press have struck an agreement that will create eight new journalism jobs.

As per the deal, Facebook will invest $1 million in a year-long fellowship initiative to allow the news agency to hire, train, equip and provide salary and benefits for reporters to be added to its newsrooms from Halifax to Vancouver.

Also, these reporters will focus on local and regional news stories but their work will be assigned, edited and distributed by the news service with no input from the tech giant.

“The stories that will be created by these journalists will be, of course, administered and managed entirely by CP editors for the benefit of our customers and so this will add a significant new volume of stories from different regions across the country,” said CP president Malcolm Kirk.

“So I think it’s a real win for journalism, it’s a real win for young journalists starting out in their careers and a huge value for our customers to be able to get new content at no additional charge.”

The partnership comes after Canadian publishers joined forces last month to call on the federal government to force tech giants like Facebook and Google to share their advertising revenue with media companies who have reported plummeting advertising revenues due to the pandemic.