Friday, March 29, 2024

Rupert Murdoch’s Knewz.com Folds After Less Than 2 Years, Shared Name with a Buffalo Polka Band

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This will not come as knewz to anyone. Rupert Murdoch’s www.knewz.com has folded, closed up shop after less than 2 years.

You may not have known about knewz. If you snoozed, you…well, you know what I mean. This was the second attempt to launch a news website apart from the New York Post and other News Corp. sites that would be tabloidy and traffic in made up news. It was designed as a “news aggregator,” meant to take on the Drudge Report, the sixth highest ranked news site on the internet. Knewz.com was ranked number 7,425 on Alexa.com among all US websites.

The first was a right wing leaning site called Heatstreet.com. That site, before it also expired after a short run, had trouble with its url because it shared a name with a tattoo and piercing parlor in South Carolina. Knewz had an issue because some might have confused with a polka band of the same name from Buffalo, New York.

Both Heatstreet and Knewz were run by News Corp’s online wunderkind, Noah Kotch. He’s now run two spectacular failures for the company. What’s next is anyone’s guess: editor of the Wall Street Journal?

All that’s left of Knewz.com is this farewell on their landing page: “We started Knewz as an experiment in news aggregation because we wanted to gather a diverse range of quality journalism, to highlight all sides of every story and to protect and project provenance. We certainly had provenance, but not profits, and so we bid Knewz farewell. Thank you to the millions of Knewz users who saw the value of the service and supported our mission.”

 Here’s a musical farewell, polka style

Roger Friedman
Roger Friedmanhttps://www.showbiz411.com
Roger Friedman began his Showbiz411 column in April 2009 after 10 years with Fox News, where he created the Fox411 column. His movie reviews are carried by Rotten Tomatoes, and he is a member of both the movie and TV branches of the Critics Choice Awards. His articles have appeared in dozens of publications over the years including New York Magazine, where he wrote the Intelligencer column in the mid 90s and covered the OJ Simpson trial, and Fox News (when it wasn't so crazy) where he covered Michael Jackson. He is also the writer and co-producer of "Only the Strong Survive," a selection of the Cannes, Sundance, and Telluride Film festivals, directed by DA Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus.
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