News Corp launches news aggregation service Knewz.com

News Corp’s Knewz.com is a news aggregation website aimed at competing with platforms like Google News.

News Corp chief executive Robert Thomson. Picture: AFP

News Corp has launched Knewz.com, a new multi-source news website free of “filter bubbles” and “narrow-minded nonsense”, thumbing its nose at fake news and clickbait perpetuated on social media.

The beta version of News Corp’s latest publishing endeavour was launched in the United States and takes in a wide variety of American news sources across the News Corp stable, but also from competitors including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Daily Mail and television networks like CNN and NBC.

Knewz.com also aggregates from leading online-only news websites across the political divide like The Daily Beast, Business Insider and Breitbart News.

Robert Thomson, chief executive of News Corp (parent company of News Corp Australia, publisher of The Australian) who has led a long campaign against social media’s misuse of original journalism and its perpetuation of fake news, said Knewz.com will be an important innovation in the way people consume news.

“Knewz is unique in that readers can, at a single glance, see multiple sources. It is not egregious aggregation but generous aggregation. There are mastheads from across the political and regional spectrum, and premium publishers will not be relegated in the rankings,” Mr Thomson said.

Knewz.com combines artificial intelligence developed by News Corp and experienced editors, with technology scanning hundreds of real news sources and editors curating headlines from the leading news and opinion stories of the day.

“Readers will have access to publishers large and small, niche and general, located in all 50 states,” Mr Thomson said.

“We live in a world of vexatious verticals, of crass clickbait, of polarised perspectives and fallacious, fact-free feeds – Knewz is knowing and needed. Knewz nous is in the house.”

In a bid to ensure publishers are rewarded for original journalism, Knewz.com will share as much data as possible with publishers to give them the ability to monetise their content – unlike the likes of Facebook and Google. Masthead branding will be prominent to respect the original news source.

Knewz.com will be available on desktop, mobile and a mobile app and will work with News’s strategy team as well as its Storyful unit under global editor-in-chief and former media editor of The Australian Darren Davidson, which is helping Knewz.com monitor news developments worldwide.

Knewz.com is currently sourcing headlines from more than 400 publishers, though the list is expected to continue evolving during beta testing. Among current publishers whose headlines can be found on Knewz.com are: 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.