The News Media Alliance, which represents local news outlets--print, broadcast, and online--has launched a News Impact Project to promote the value of local news publishers. 

That comes as the group is trying to get online news aggregators to better compensate them, or compensate them at all, for that high-value content. 

NMA argues that local content is vital to communities and that being able to monetize that content is vital to its survival.

Related: NMA Says Facebook Is De Facto News Publishing Regulator

A central feature of the project is a new News Impact Index of stories by alliance members that have had a positive impact on communities. The alliance said that index "provides compelling evidence of the critical role of and need for high-quality local journalism to ensure an informed society." 

The stories include ones on speeding ticket fines, mass evictions, tainted drugs, untested sex assault kits, possible false imprisonment, and one that hit close to home--newspapers being trashed in dumpsters rather than delivered. 

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg continues to get advice from inside and outside the Beltway as he prepares to testify on Capitol Hill this week in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica data sharing flap.

The News Media Alliance, which represents newspapers across the country, summed its message up in three words: "Support Real News, a message it is sending in an ad it has produced welcoming the Facebook founder to D.C.

"As a major source for news, Facebook has an obligation not only to be transparent about their data-sharing and usage practices [the subject of a pair of hearings at which Zuckerberg is scheduled to testify] "but they have a duty to ensure their users have access to high-quality, real news. Facebook benefits greatly from having this quality news content on their platforms, which they use to attract digital ad dollars. It is time they acknowledge this and respond by prioritizing quality news produced by real, professional journalists in their algorithms and in the News Feed."

Related: Powell Says Facebook Troubles Expose Myth of Openness

NMA launched a "Real News" campaign to try to get social media sites to prioritize curated journalism over the echo-chamber of 'fake news.'

"[W]e have argued that Facebook should give priority to news from trusted sources," NMA said back in January in response to this post from Zuckerberg. This would be positive for consumers, as well as help to address “fake news” issues.

WASHINGTON — Edge providers are beginning to take more heat in the nation’s capital.

The bigger edge providers — companies that provide online applications, content or services, such as Google, Facebook or Yahoo — are being branded as gatekeepers of information, and getting called out as non-neutral online content arbitrators. That was once the exclusive province of internet service providers such as Comcast, AT&T and others, who have been branded as the snakes in the virtuous circle of content to network to consumer.

The doesn’t mean the pressure is off ISPs, particularly on the issue of Title II reclassification, but the vice is starting to twist more on Silicon Valley poster companies that pretty much got a pass in discussions about controlling the overall access to information.

The turning of that bitter worm was clear as one prominent House Democrat laid into edge providers, and at an Oct. 24 House hearing on political advertising saw newspaper publishers roll up their collective editions and spank Google and Facebook as peddlers of fake news for a buck.

Democrats on the House Energy & Commerce Committee have been talking among themselves about the optics of leaving edge providers out of the speech debate, particularly given the rise of fake news — i.e., the real kind, rather than the accusations of President Donald Trump against mainstream media.

Related: Some Troubled by 'Trump TV'

That came to something of a head, or at least to a signal of changing political fortunes, when Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) requested a briefing with edge providers that he accused of shaping news content.

“With a goal of ad clicks or driving page views, these companies’ policies are not neutral; they actively shape content on the web,” said Pallone, who sent a letter to Google, Facebook and Twitter seeking a briefing on their policies for “moderating content and advertising” as social media’s role in fake news and Russian election meddling swirled inside the Beltway.

Pallone was also responding to reports of vague, confusing and inconsistently applied content guidelines.

A Hill source said Democrats on the Energy & Commerce Committee are clearly trying to include tech firms in conversations about their role in net neutrality and the First Amendment going forward.

“The influence of the internet over our national dialogue and our lives has skyrocketed over the past decade,” Pallone said. “At the same time, the number of websites handling this traffic has consolidated to a handful of key platforms. The combination of these trends has led to these few companies taking on a quasi-governmental role policing content.”

Page Views vs. Page Turns
Pallone suggested that inconsistent application may be tied to the desire to boost page views and ad clicks, foreshadowing the complaints of the News Media Alliance at a hearing on political advertising last week.

Only a day after Pallone’s letter was made public, the head of the News Media Alliance, which represents almost 2,000 newspapers, pressed the issue in a hearing with House members on political advertising and a bill, the Honest Ads Act, that would require broadcast-live disclosures on online political ads.

Related: NMA Says Google, Facebook Business Models Fuel Fake News

While ISPs have gotten used to being called internet gatekeepers on Capitol Hill, NMA president David Chavern said that Google, Facebook and other edge players are news gatekeepers that have fueled fake news and “harmed the integrity of content and advertising.”

That’s because the edge business model is based on “not exercising responsibility over the integrity of content of the advertising that sustains its foundation,” Chavern told the House Oversight Committee’s Information Technology Subcommittee.

Chavern said that the public “should no longer have to suffer from unreliable information because it is profitable, while producers of content [such as his newspaper members] continue to hold ourselves to a higher standard.”

The head of the News Media Alliance, which represents almost 2,000 newspapers, told a House committee Tuesday (Oct.24) that Google, Facebook and other edge players are news gatekeepers that have fueled fake news and "harmed the integrity of content and advertising."

That is because the edge business model is based on "not exercising responsibility over the integrity of content of the advertising that sustains its foundation," David Chavern, NMA president, said during a House Oversight Committee Information Technology Subcommittee hearing on political ad laws and how they may need to be changed or updated in the digital era and in the wake of revelations Russian Facebook and Google ads targeted to influence the 2016 presidential election.

"It is now time that Google and Facebook be asked to make the same commitments as publishers and modernize their platforms to help stem the flow of misinformation — a problem that is largely of their own making," Chavern said.

Related: Publishers Seek Hill Help Against Digital Duopoly: Facebook, Google

He said Federal Election Commission rules should require disclosures within internet ads, and that Google and Facebook should update their business models to elevate reputable content in search and news feeds.

Chavern said the public "should no longer have to suffer from unreliable information because it is profitable, while producers of content [like his newspaper members] continue to hold ourselves to a higher standard."