Print journalism is supposed to be a dying industry, which companies like Facebook interpret to mean online journalism is a growing one. Over the last year or so, Facebook has used their unmatched social media network to report news in unique ways. Their latest foray, "Facebook newswire," is their boldest move to date.
Rather than feed users individualized news -- which is the object of Facebook's recent feature "trending" -- Facebook newswire works with the news agency Storyful to find first-hand news items posted or shared on Facebook. Example: when Derek Jeter announced his retirement via his Facebook page.
Before sharing stories, the newswire team verifies and briefly summarizes them (usually in their own words), Mashable reported. Most importantly, they add something that came directly from the source's Facebook post. In Jeter's case, they would probably post a link to his page or some direct quotes. For another example, newsire posted a picture of President Obama at the Naitonal Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation. They found the picture from the Museum's page and credited them as the source.
Basically, Facebook is organizing news about what people are posting on Facebook, but emphasizing only items of note.
"It's going to be journalists every step of the way deciding what is of value, what should we verify, and going off and starting what is a very rigorous process at Storyful [to verify the story]," Aine Kerr, managing editor at Storyful, told Mashable.
"What we're trying to do is make sure journalists have as many choices [and] first-person content as possible so they can tell the most complete story they can," he added.
Because news is pulled from Facebook accounts all over the world, the stories sometimes come in a foreign language. The captions, however, are always in English for English speaking users.
