Rupert Murdoch Just Sold His Newspapers to Facebook for $150 Million and Called It a Win

If you thought newspapers were in trouble before, wait until you hear what Rupert Murdoch just did. News Corp, the media giant behind the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, just signed a three-year deal worth up to $150 million letting Meta (the company that owns Facebook and Instagram) scrape their articles to train AI.

And the wildest part? News Corp CEO Robert Thomson is thrilled about it. At a Morgan Stanley tech conference this week, he described his company as essentially an "input company" for AI, comparing their news content to semiconductors and data centers. In other words, he is saying their journalism is now just raw material for robots to learn from.

Thomson said he takes a "woo or sue" approach to AI companies. Either they pay up for the content, or they get taken to court. He also revealed he regularly chats with both Sam Altman from OpenAI and Mark Zuckerberg on WhatsApp.

This comes on top of a $250 million deal News Corp already signed with OpenAI back in 2024. So that is $400 million total in AI licensing deals. The question everyone is asking: is this the future of news, or the beginning of the end?

As reported by The Guardian.

Source: The Guardian