Facebook to pay Murdoch's News Corp for content, announces self-publishing platform for writers

The new platform will be initially introduced in the US and is aimed at taking on Substack and Medium

Facebook struck a multi-year deal with Rupert Murdoch's News Corp for its journalism content in Australia on Tuesday.

The deal includes news content from Murdoch media outlets like The Australian, a national newspaper; the news website news.com.au; major metropolitan publications like The Courier-Mail in Queensland, Herald Sun in Victoria and The Daily Telegraph in New South Wales, and other regional and community publications.

News Corp CEO Robert Thomson described the deal as "a landmark in transforming the terms of trade for journalism".

Thomson did not disclose how much Facebook has agreed to pay the firm for content, but said that it would have a "meaningful impact" on Australian news businesses.

"Mark Zuckerberg and his team deserve credit for their role in helping to fashion a future for journalism, which has been under extreme duress for more than a decade," Thomson said.

"Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch led a global debate while others in our industry were silent or supine as digital dysfunctionality threatened to turn journalism into a mendicant order."

The agreement comes after Facebook's spat with the Australian government over a new law that required big tech platforms to pay local news publishers for sharing their content on their platforms.

The social media giant was initially not ready to pay local publishers for their content and announced last month that it was blocking all news websites (domestic and international) on its platform in Australia.

The company also restricted Australian users from sharing any news content from Australian publishers.

Critics described the move undemocratic, with many accusing Facebook of bullying a democratic government.

However, both parties reached a compromise on key aspects of the law a few days later, with Will Easton, managing director of Facebook Australia, saying that the new amendments in Australian legislation would ensure that Facebook is able to resume "work to further our investment in public interest journalism, and restore news on Facebook for Australians ".

In another move, Facebook says it will launch a service for independent authors and bloggers to take on the likes of Medium and Substack.

In blog post published on Monday, Campbell Brown, Facebook's VP of global news partnerships, and Anthea Watson Strong, product manager, said that the company would soon launch a new platform that would help writers, experts and journalists by offering them tools for content creation and audience growth.

The platform will initially launch in the US and Facebook says it "will start by partnering with a small subset of independent writers".

The social media giant noted that it intends to build "tools and services specific to the needs of independent local journalists" who are often the "lone voice covering a given community".

Facebook's new platform will include a self-publishing tool that will come with "robust" styling options for creating email newsletters and websites. It will be integrated with Facebook Pages to allow writers to create new content across stories, photos and live videos.

The platform will also let content developers to create groups to engage with their reader community.

Facebook says this platform will help writers make money through monetisation tools, starting with subscriptions.