Facebook is more important to news distribution than you think, and journalists are freaked out

Poynter reporting:
Facebook’s Liz Heron answered for a litany of perceived sins and slights last week during a conversation with The Atlantic’s Alexis Madrigal and attendees at the Online News Association conference in Chicago. Journalists are anxious about being left out of the loop about how Facebook works, and they want answers...
But there are more existential fears behind this conversation, too: If Facebook isn’t interested in exposing users to content that might be important but won’t result in high engagement like softer news and quizzes do, what will happen to news literacy? What will happen to civic engagement? What happens to The News That Matters, if only Facebook gets to decide what matters?
Facebook would say they’re not really deciding what news matters — they’re just revealing what news really resonates with each individual user. And that’s how you end up with Ice Bucket Challenge videos dominating your News Feed instead of the latest information about Ferguson protests...
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