Photo by Chris Rief aka Spodie Odie.

According to this report in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post is currently working on a new “free news-aggregation website.” The site, called Trove, will apparently allow readers to build their own news site using “more than 10,000 news sources” and is slated to go live next month.

Part of Trove’s home page, which will include ads, will be dedicated to a stream of news picked by editors, while a separate area will show topic channels that list the top three stories based on users’ interests. Readers can select from more than 3,000 topics to personalize the site, ranging from news issues like democracy in the Middle East to evergreen ones like organic gardening.

As far as the idea goes, I can’t help but feeling like I’ve seen this exact approach before — if on a smaller scale.

Also: are you ready to have Facebook serve as your news funnel? The Post told WSJ’s Russell Adams that developing revenue streams for the site — development of which has cost The Washington Post Co. as much as $10 million — is “a secondary concern” to building an audience, which they hope to do through the ubiquitous social networking service. According to the WSJ, initial users “will have to sign up for Trove through a Facebook account, so interests and other information from their profiles, along with fan pages they joined, will be reflected on the news site.”

Given the high profile launch of The Daily, and the New York Times’ plans to develop a similar-sounding site, the Post will be entering into what is a rapidly-crowding market. Will any of you give it a whirl?