News Corp has officially launched its news aggregation platform ‘Knewz’, something the company says will give readers access to news “free of filter bubbles and narrow-minded nonsense”.
Powered by artificial intelligence and curated by news editors, News Corp hopes the platform will be able to compete with popular news aggregation services such as Google News and Apple 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,” said News Corp chief executive Robert Thomson.
The technology is used to offer readers multiple sources on daily news stories, sourcing headlines from more than 400 publishers.
The platform naturally utilises News Corp’s wide range of titles, however, publications from outside of the network are also included, such as BuzzFeed.
“Readers will have access to publishers large and small, niche and general, located in all 50 states,” said 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.”
There are no ads on Knewz, but News Corp says it will share “as much data as possible with publishers, ensuring that they have every opportunity to monetize their content”.
It is available on both mobile and desktop.
It comes as Facebook continues to roll out its own ‘Facebook News‘ aggregation service for mobile, in which it directly pays some participating publishers.
“I think every internet platform has a responsibility to help fund and support news,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said upon the announcement.
“Hopefully others will follow the model we are helping to set up.”
