February 2021

Timeline of our
support of Newsin Australia

Over the past three years, Facebook has worked
on creating a sustainable path for the news
industry — from reaching commercial agreementswith publishers, funding accelerators and grants
to reach regional newsrooms affected by COVID-19
pandemic. The timeline below provides somekey milestones and our support of Australian
news publishers.

2021

FE B RUA RY

Support for Australia’s regional publishers
Following the grants distributed via our partner — the Walkley Foundation, we
have captured some of the stories from publishers’ vital support. From helping
them hire and retain journalists, to grow revenue streams and ensure a sustainablebusiness model for their newsrooms.

JA NUA RY

Eight Australian publishers shared theimpact of the FJP accelerator program
After three months of attentive coaching, in-person training and the applicationof funding, the initiative helped publishers grow. This included new digital
subscribers for News Corp’s regional division in Queensland and Melbourne’s
Schwartz Media among others.

2020

JULY

Results announced for the FJP COVID-19
Australian News Relief Fund Program
As part of the Facebook Journalism Project Relief Fund — The Walkley
Foundation announced grants that will support 17 Australian newsrooms
in projects that build the publishers’ long-term financial sustainability.

M AYApplications open for the FJP COVID-19
Australian News Relief Fund Grant Program
Providing funding to support Australian news organisations that serve regionalor non-metropolitan communities in producing original news content related toCOVID-19 and/or projects that contribute to a publishers’ long-term financial
sustainability. News organisations were eligible for a single amount ranging
from $10,000-$60,000 USD (circa $15,000 to $92,000 AUD).

A PRIL$2M USD to support Asia Pacificnews organisations
We made a $2M USD investment in grant funding, coaching and training.
Including a Digital Media Bootcamp: COVID-19 Edition for over 1,000 media
professionals to learn about product best practices for coverage of COVID-19.

7News co-hosted Facebook Watch“COVID Frontline” exclusive
Co-hosted with Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post and Singapore’s Straits
Times, the Facebook Watch broadcast that generated more than 25.6 million
views in a partnership with 7News in Australia, the South China Morning Post
(SCMP) in Hong Kong, and The Straits Times in Singapore.

Supporting fact-checkers andlocal news organisations
We partnered with The International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) to launch
a $1M USD grant programme to increase fact-checkers’ capacity during thistime — including fact-checking projects from RMIT ABC Fact Check (Australia)
and other APAC countries.

Label Breaking News on Facebook
We expanded our test to enable more than 50 additional publishers including
publishers in Australia to label their stories as breaking news on Facebook.

2019

SEPT EMB ER

Expansion of Local News Accelerator
to Australia and New Zealand
Launched a partnership with the Walkley Foundation — the program convened
11 publishers from September to December in Sydney and supported theirefforts to boost direct reader revenue through subscriptions, memberships
and one-off payments.

APAC News Leadership Roundtable
Australian publishers leaders were invited to a roundtable discussion inSingapore with Facebook Product Marketing Leadership on the launchof Facebook News in the US and on Facebook’s curation principles.

AUGUST

Facebook partners with Australian
news publishers to fund news shows
on Facebook Watch
Secured deals with seven Australian publishers for clips and original news
programming for Facebook Watch — Seven, Nine, 10, SBS, Junkee, Sky
and PedestrianTV.

Launched Facebook Watch and ad breaks
Following the global launch of Facebook Watch— Facebook brought adbreaks
to Australia, allowing publishers to insert mid-roll and pre-roll advertising andgenerate revenue from their videos.

JUNE

Election best practice training
for newsrooms
We brought journalists and newsroom leaders to our election readiness event,which focused on product updates that can aid newsrooms. This followed our
initial training in April that included a CrowdTangle best practices session —educating attendees on how to leverage CrowdTangle data analytics specificallyaround elections.

A PRIL

Third-party fact-checking in partnership
We launched our third-party fact-checking in partnership with the international
news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP), as we continue to improve theaccuracy of information on Facebook. We expanded our partnerships toinclude AAP Fact-check in June 2019.

FEB RUA RY

The Walkley Foundation Partnership
We announced an AUS$5 million investment in programs and partnershipsthat will help support the Australian community and news industry. This
included support for the Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom’s (AJF) work topromote media freedom in the Asia-Pacific region and the right of journalists
to report news safely.

2018

O C TO BE R

Facebook Journalism Project &Storyful training
Australian journalists were invited to join a global training program with
Storyful — an award-winning social media intelligence agency that verifies
and contextualizes digital content. The program offered tips and crossplatform best practices for journalists as they discovered social media
content online that is relevant to their reporting.

Asia Pacific News Literacy Working
Group Sydney
Facebook Australia and our partners from the University of Technology
Sydney brought 40 experts from Asia Pacific’s newsrooms, publishers,
education institutions and third-party fact-checking organizations todiscuss and identify initiatives that will help people be more discerning
consumers, creators and sharers of media.

FJP News Day
We brought together 117 news partners, journalists for a full day of training
in Sydney which included training on CrowdTangle and Facebook Analytics,
product workshops on video and groups on Facebook and reporting bestpractices for Elections.

2017

JUNE

Asia Pacific News Literacy GroupTo address the challenge of supporting news literacy in Asia Pacific, we
supported projects identified by members of the Asia Pacific News Literacy
Group, including:• Supported University of Technology Sydney’s School of Communication
research into ‘Falling in love again — what will it take for audiences
to trust newsmakers again?’ which looked to identify and understandaudience trust in news in Australia.
• Supported Crinkling News to host the first national media literacy
conference MediaMe, for young people in Australia. The conference
brought together journalists, social media experts and academics totackle different aspects of news and media literacy.
• Supported the University of Melbourne study of “The Future Newsroom”.
The study looked at the news industry and identified changes withprofessional journalism and new business models.