News Corp Australia plans to have its own newswire service up by the end of June, following its decision, along with Nine, to close natio nal news agency Australian Associated Press (AAP).
The new operation is aiming to have staff across most major cities, and will provide content to its own mastheads, as well as sell to other media organisations, according to reports.
“We are establishing this as an independent unit from the company. So the mastheads will be clients, and the initial design has been to provide content for our mastheads, and that includes The Australian and News.com.au,” says News Corp’s editorial director Mel Mansell, who is heading up the project.
“It is also going to be content that we will make available as required to clients outside our business.
"We will be pretty open to engagement with potential customers about what sort of content they need going down the track.”
Both internal and external staff will be hired to run the service, which is going by the working title of NCA NewsWire.
The closure of AAP, which has customers including The Guardian Australia, has been paused after several investors showed interest in buying parts of the 85-year-old national newswire. It was set to shut at the end of June, after shareholders Nine and News Corp Australia pulled out, saying it was unsustainable.
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