This hurts. Taking a day off from publishing news and content feels completely wrong.
As journalists, editors and publishers, when your life is all about news and sharing the diverse views and opinions on issues impacting women, it hurts to wake up knowing that you won’t be publishing any of it today.
It’s strange to run a news meeting, as we did this morning, knowing none of what we discussed will get published across our website, our newsletter, or on social media.
It hurts to see major news issues we know we should be covering — giving an essential take across politics, business, climate, tech, leadership and so much more — while knowing they won’t get any airtime on Women’s Agenda today.
But we’ve made the decision to join around 30 or so publishing colleagues and other titles across Australia in declaring a news freeze, in protesting against Facebook (Meta) for choosing to support and fund larger media publishers while refusing to even negotiate with smaller, independent publishers like us.
We’re 100% female-owned and run, publishing six to eight stories a day, with a small team of journalists. We put an essential gender lens over politics, business, tech, climate, health entrepreneurship and so much more.
You might recall when Facebook issued a ban of news media content across Instagram and Facebook, blocking Women’s Agenda, almost a year ago.
At that point, it was clear that Facebook considered Women’s Agenda a news publisher.
However, when it came to negotiating a deal with Women’s Agenda as it was required to do under the News Bargaining Code, Facebook got two meetings in with us, before it pulled the plug on all further conversations.
We found that despite much larger media publishers receiving financial and other support after negotiating deals with Facebook, publishers like us were completely left out of such deals.
This is deeply unfair. And it’s seriously concerning for media diversity, public interest journalism and everything else that underpins a healthy democracy.
It’s unfair that larger publishers are receiving millions of dollars from Facebook, including Murdoch-owned media, to support audience acquisition, marketing, technology and other areas, while smaller, independent publishers like Women’s Agenda receive absolutely nothing.
Media like Women’s Agenda are critical for broadening our understanding of what’s really going on.
Publishers like us give a voice to the issues that matter: particularly those overlooked by mainstream media, seen as too “niche”, or too challenging to address.
We matter. Don’t make it harder on us by disadvantaging us.
We are inviting Facebook to the negotiating table, as they were asked to do 12 months ago when the Australian Federal Government passed the News Media Bargaining Code into law. The purpose was to support public interest journalism, but if publications like ours are left out due to Facebook refusing to fairly play ball, then it has the opposite effect. Facebook’s current stance is making it impossible to compete, with millions of dollars being paid to larger publishing platforms who can go on to spend on audience acquisition, better marketing and tech.
So no news today.
We are #WaitingOnZuck