Today, News Corp has bolstered its digital news business with the launch of a curated news aggregation service named Knewz.
“Readers will have access to publishers large and small, niche and general, located in all 50 states,” said News Corp chief executive Robert Thomson. “We live in a world of vexatious verticals, of crass clickbait, of polarized perspectives and fallacious, fact-free feeds – Knewz is knowing and needed. Knewz nous is in the house.”
Quite a tongue-twister of a statement.
The company says that Knewz.com will work by combining cutting edge, proprietary AI with experienced editors. The technology constantly scans hundreds of real news sources, and editors curate a selection of headlines that provide a broad perspective on stories of the day.
This appears to be News Corp’s shot at Google News.
So from which outlets will Knewz be sourcing its headlines from? According to a press release, it will aggregate news headlines from more than 400 publishers with a wide variety of political leanings. These outlets include: Rupert Murdoch‘s Fox News Channel, News Corp’s own Wall Street Journal, as well as CNBC, CNN, Bloomberg, the Washington Post, the New York Times, NBC News, the New York Post, Anchorage Daily News, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Axios, Bangor Daily News, Black Enterprise, The Blaze, Bleacher Report, BuzzFeed, Daily Kos, Deadline, Defense News, El Paso Times, Essence, The Federalist, Foreign Affairs, Hartford Courant, Mother Jones, The Nation, National Review, Newsmax, Out, Reason, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, The Root, Scientific American, Talking Points Memo, Tampa Bay Times, Townhall, Washington Examiner, Washington Free Beacon, Washington Post and Winston-Salem Journal.
The free Knewz.com will not carry any advertising. However, the company said it will feature publications’ branding “to ensure that provenance is respected.”
Interesting.
So, who is running Knewz? News Corp tapped Noah Kotch, former editor-in-chief of the Daily Mail, to oversee the news service. The service is run by a team of News Corp editors and producers in conjunction with the company’s strategy team as well as its Storyful unit, which News Corp. acquired in 2013. The site uses “proprietary artificial intelligence” to help editors pick out featured articles, according to a company press release.
Knewz.com is available on desktop, mobile and mobile app, and will be operated by a team of editors and tech experts at News Corp, working in conjunction with the company’s Strategy team as well as its Storyful unit, which is helping Knewz.com monitor news developments worldwide.
