News Corp. in Advanced Talks With Facebook on Subscriptions

(Bloomberg) -- News Corp., publisher of the Wall Street Journal and the Times of London, is holding "very advanced" discussions with Facebook Inc. about subscriptions to its content online, Chief Executive Officer Robert Thomson said.

"I’ve been talking with Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, exchanging thoughts, on how important it is that the value of content should be recognized," Thomson said in an interview at a media industry conference on Wednesday in Turin, Italy. "We are in the middle of negotiations with Facebook on a subscription mechanic."

Earlier at the conference, Thomson attacked the digital walled gardens used by technology companies such as Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Facebook. "They are made to keep people in, this is not free movement of people,” he said in the interview. “Particularly Google is a problem.”

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. competes with Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News, in providing financial news and information.

News Corp. shares reverse earlier losses and gained 0.3 percent to $13.53 at the close Wednesday in New York. The stock has climbed 18 percent this year.

A deal to promote subscriptions via Facebook could be a boon to the newspaper and magazine industries. Publishers are relying more on getting readers to pay because they’ve struggled to sustain a digital advertising business as Facebook and Google vacuum up the lion’s share of online ad dollars.

The agreement could include bundling subscription content, perhaps around specific topics like sports or business, Thomson said at a conference last week in London. Zuckerberg has recognized that premium sources of news and journalism have suffered over the last decade, Thomson said.

Facebook’s solution is “beneficial not just for us but is efficacious for smaller publishers as well,” Thomson said then. “There needs to be a fundamental change in the outlook to how we value content and the value of content.”

Social media sites are important “reach drivers” for Axel Springer SE, the German owner of Business Insider and the Bild newspaper, CEO Mathias Doepfner said at a conference Thursday in Berlin. He said subscription is one element of a stable monetization model that publishers need, and Facebook is being “very constructive” in preparing initiatives.

“We’re confident that in a relatively short period of time" there’ll be models to monetize news content on social media, Doepfner said.

Murdoch’s publishing empire, which split from his television and movie business in 2013, has been more cautious about partnering with Facebook than its peers. Unlike other news outlets, the Wall Street Journal didn’t strike a deal to create live videos for Facebook. And while some publishers made all of their stories available as Facebook “Instant Articles” by posting content directly to the platform, the Journal offered only a small number of stories.

--With assistance from Gerry Smith Rebecca Penty Stefan Nicola and Caroline Hyde

To contact the reporters on this story: Daniele Lepido in Milan at dlepido1@bloomberg.net, Tommaso Ebhardt in Milan at tebhardt@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Vidya Root at vroot@bloomberg.net, Anthony Palazzo at apalazzo@bloomberg.net, Crayton Harrison, Ville Heiskanen