Former Tory MP Louise Mensch is to launch a centre-right website for Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.
Mensch tweeted that under her leadership the libertarian website, Heat Street, will be a place where “disagreement will be encouraged”.
Disagreement will be encouraged #HeatStreet https://t.co/sBHNrptDyI
— Louise Mensch (@LouiseMensch) February 16, 2016
Mensch, who once launched her own Twitter-like social network Menshn, will run Heat Street with Noah Kotch.
Miles Goslett, the freelance journalist with credits including scoops on Kids Company and the Jimmy Savile scandal at the BBC, has been appointed as the UK editor of Heat Street.
Goslett’s appointment is not thought to be the start of a major staffing initiative and roll-out of the site in the UK.
He is understood to be tasked with working with the US team on the upcoming presidential election, being based in the UK he will be able to keep publishing Heat Street content when the US operation winds down overnight.
Goslett will also publish some stories for the site on UK news and current events.
A spokeswoman for News Corp confirmed the launch of the site, which will focus on the US market.
“Longtime NBC and ABC producer Noah Kotch and Louise Mensch are working on a news and information project,” said a spokesman for News Corporation. “ It’s called ‘Heat Street’ and will, in a spirit of free speech and no ‘safe spaces,’ cover a variety of topics from a diversity of viewpoints.”
Heat Street will hire a number of staff members, although it is not planned to be a major standalone start-up like Murdoch’s ill-fated iPad newspaper the Daily, and will focus on the US market.
Mensch has been working with News Corp on “digital projects” since 2014.
