WSJ: Facebook’s news tab could launch by the end of the month

While Mark Zuckerberg gives speeches about not wanting Facebook to be the arbiter of truth, the Wall Street Journal reports his company is setting up deals to launch its dedicated tab for news. In a post earlier this year, the CEO said “It’s important to me that we help people get trustworthy news and find solutions that help journalists around the world do their important work.”

That will apparently take the form of a new section featuring human-curated Top News headlines (along with algorithmically-sorted subsections from “trusted publishers” that include those from WSJ parent News Corp, Buzzfeed News, the Washington Post and others. Its sources indicate that licensing fees could range from hundreds of thousands per year to millions for larger outlets.

Facebook’s recent troubles and a lack of trust in the company has stung its Libra cryptocurrency efforts, but paying publishers should help it fill out a news section that will compete with Apple’s news package and Google’s recently-readjusted news page.