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March 30, 2020 
By DYLAN BYERS in Los Angeles & AHIZA GARCÍA-HODGES in San Francisco Good morning. 🗣️ Top talker: President Donald Trump said Sunday that he's extending his administration's guidelines on social distancing during the COVID-19 outbreak until at least April 30.
• The latest: There have been 138,631 confirmed cases and 2,414 deaths so far in the U.S., per NBC News.
Join the Market: 🗞️ Newsletter | 🎙️ Podcast
Bloomberg/Getty How to Spend It Mark Zuckerberg gives $100m to news industry
Moving the Market: Facebook will today announce a $100 million commitment to support news organizations covering the coronavirus pandemic, bolstering last year's $300 million investment in local news, Mark Zuckerberg told me on Sunday.
• Facebook will give $25 million in emergency grant funding for local news through the Facebook Journalism Project, and $75 million in additional marketing spend — meaning, it will buy $75 million worth of ad space from select news outlets.
The big picture: The coronavirus pandemic has forced advertisers to cut their budgets, depriving news outlets of much-needed revenue and raising existential questions about the long-term health of the industry, particularly at the local level.
• Facebook's investment aims to fill the void — while also buying the company some much-needed goodwill.
"In a recession, marketing is the first thing that everyone pulls back on," Zuckerberg told me. "We're very sensitive to that. Marketing is what supports our business. For local businesses, for local news, they need that to be sustainable."
• "We're directing capital toward the organizations that need it most," Zuckerberg said, though he did not specify exactly which outlets would receive the marketing funds. A Facebook spokesperson said more specifics would be forthcoming.
• Facebook will direct some of the $25 million in emergency funding to The Post and Courier in South Carolina; the Southeast Missourian in Missouri; and El Paso Matters in Texas.
The backstory: Facebook announced last January that it was committing $300 million to help local news outlets, a move that came one year after Google announced its own $300 million investment to support local journalism.
• "We've had a commitment to supporting journalism for many years," Zuckerberg said. "And we're not just building programs to support folks... we're spending more time getting to know the folks who run these organizations."
Eion Noonan/Getty Future of Media Ben Smith: Don't bail out news
Moving Manhattan: New York Times columnist Ben Smith says the ad-supported newspaper businesses — currently facing an existential crisis from coronavirus — should be left to die so it can give way to a new network of online newsrooms.
• The big picture: "The advertising business that has sustained the local newspapers... has gone from slow decline to free fall. So the leaders trying to get the local news industry through this economic shock need to confront reality."
• "That way, we can rescue the only thing worth saving about America’s gutted, largely mismanaged local newspaper companies — the journalists."
What's next: Smith says the "most promising" vision for the industry is "a big new network of nonprofit news organizations across the country on the model of The Texas Tribune."
🗞️ The Big Question 🗞️
Can a fragile media ecosystem survive the pandemic? That is the question The New Yorker's Michael Luo poses in his new piece on the fate of the news in the age of the coronavirus.
"The economic shutdown created by the spread of COVID-19 promises to decimate advertising revenue, which could doom more digital news outlets and local newspapers," he writes.
Bloomberg/Getty Hollywood Gives Iger, Katzenberg give to L.A.
Talk of Tinseltown: Bob Iger and Willow Bay, Jeffrey and Marilyn Katzenberg and Steven Spielberg and Kate Capshaw are among the Hollywood power couples that have each donated $500,000 to help Los Angeles deal with the coronavirus outbreak.
• Mayor Eric Garcetti said Sunday that six couples had donated a total of $3 million that will be redistributed to "those who are the worst off in this city," including seniors and those in need of financial assistance, Deadline's Dominic Patten reports.
• Ellen Bronfman Hauptman and Andrew Hauptman; Meg Whitman and Griffith Harsh; and Casey and Laura Wasserman were also among the donors.
The big picture: The donations come "as Tinseltown reels from COVID-19 causing productions to be halted, layoffs and pay cuts and an age of uncertainty," Patten writes.
Bloomberg/Getty Tuning Out Podcast biz hit by coronavirus
Sound of Silence: Americans have been listening to fewer and fewer podcasts since early March, when concerns about the coronavirus outbreak starting getting worse, WWD's Kali Hays writes.
The big picture: People aren't commuting, which is prime time for podcast listening. And for the time being, the daily news is more riveting than a true crime series.
China News Service/Getty No Show China closes cinemas, again
Big in Beijing: The Chinese government has issued an order to close Chinese movie theaters after the country started slowly reopening them during the past two weeks, THR's Patrick Brzeski writes.
• No reason was given but "insiders believe the government is worried about a potential second wave of coronavirus infections."
The big picture: "The phased reopening of China's vast network of 70,000 movie screens had promised a rare bright spot on the global distribution map, given that cinemas are shuttered in virtually every other major market around the globe."
• Now the decision to re-close all theaters is being met with dismay.
The bigger picture: "This second closure will not be a one- or two-week issue ... They are going to be even more cautious when they attempt to reopen again — and this will set us back a long time," an exhibition company exec told THR.
• What's next: Studios are in a tough spot. Theaters are closed again and regulators currently won't let them release new movies online.
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