Some stories from News Corp will be among the headlines delivered in a news tab Facebook plans to launch soon. Facebook made this confirmation on Friday, 18th October 2019. News Corp is the publisher of The Wall Street Journal.
Edited by seasoned journalists, the tab will be separate from the feed that displays updates from people’s friends. The new feature marks a departure from Facebook’s longstanding practice of letting algorithms dictate users’ experiences.
The firm’s co-founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement:
“I’m excited we’ll have the opportunity to include award-winning journalism from The Wall Street Journal — and other US News Corp properties — in our news tab.”
The company provided no details about the agreement. However, last month Facebook said it plans to pay only a portion of the publishers whose stories appear in the tab.
Facebook and Google currently dominate the market for online advertising. This makes it harder for traditional news organisations to gain traction in digital.
Zuckerberg and his social network have also come under intense pressure in recent years. This is due to the spread of so-called “fake news” and data privacy issues.
News Corp chief executive Robert Thomson said Facebook “deserves credit for recognising the principle of journalistic provenance.”
“Mark Zuckerberg seems personally and professionally committed to ensuring that high-quality journalism has a viable, valued future,” he added.
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reports that Facebook plans to pay about a quarter of the estimated 200 news organisations whose articles will be featured.
A human team will select relevant, reliable breaking news and also top news stories for the tab. In addition, the number of publishers involved will grow over time, Facebook said.
Aside from human-curated top news, sections of the tab will rely on algorithms to figure out a user’s interests based on “signals”. These signals include pages followed, interactions with online news or subscriptions to publications.