openpolitics.com

Service features headlines from about 400 local and national news sources from across political spectrum

News Corp NWS -0.72% on Wednesday launched Knewz.com, a news-aggregation service aimed at competing with platforms like Alphabet Inc.’s GOOG +0.35% Google News that the media company has complained doesn’t adequately recompense publishers.

The service features headlines from about 400 local and national news sources, including the Washington Post, the New York Times, Newsmax and the Nation.

“There are mastheads from across the political and regional spectrum, and premium publishers will not be relegated in the rankings,” Robert Thomson, chief executive of News Corp said in a statement.

News Corp is the parent company of The Wall Street Journal. The news-aggregation service also features headlines from across News Corp’s portfolio including the New York Post, the Times of London and the Sun in the U.K., as well as many papers in Australia.

The articles on Knewz.com will link directly to publishers’ sites, and News Corp will receive no remuneration. News Corp says it will share data with those publishers and prominently tag each link with the name of its source.

News Corp said it developed the site, in part, to give exposure to media outlets that the company felt were often demoted in Google’s search results and Facebook Inc.’s social feed. Mr. Thomson has long been a vocal critic of how the algorithms used by big tech platforms affect publishers’ ability to reach audiences.

Google and Facebook have said their algorithms don’t rank or prioritize content based on the political leanings of news organizations.

News Corp Executive Chairman Rupert Murdoch has argued that tech companies should pay licensing fees for the use of news stories published by other media companies.

Since the Journal first reported News Corp’s development of the service in August, the company—along with other publishers—has reached a deal with Facebook to receive a licensing fee for the use of its story links inside a recently launched news tab on the social-media platform.

The company also reached a deal last year with Apple Inc. to take part in its subscription news bundle, Apple News +, in return for a share of the subscription revenue.

Google hasn’t agreed to pay news companies directly but has argued that it plays a key role in helping news outlets monetize online content through the traffic its search engine sends to their sites and revenue generated through Google’s ad platforms, which most publishers rely on.