Two years ago, Google founded it Digital News Initiative (DNI), a partnership between Google and publishers in Europe to support high-quality journalism through technology and innovation. In addition to investing in product development, research and training, Google launched the DNI Innovation Fund, committing €150 million to innovation projects across the European news industry. Today, the recipients of the third funding round are announced, during which a total of €21.968.154 will be awarded to 107 projects in 27 countries.
For this round, Google received more than 988 requests from 27 countries. From 107 projects currently funded, 49 are originals (projects that are at an early stage and require funding up to 50.000 euros), 31 are medium projects (requiring up to 300.000 euro funding) and 27 are major projects (requiring up to 1 million euro funding).
Google Digital News Initiative: What has changed in this funding round?
First and foremost, there is growing interest in verification experiments, with 29% more applications in this area than in the previous round. There is also an increase in artificial intelligence projects (+ 23% more applications from the previous round), research journalism (+ 20%) and virtual and augmented reality approaches (+ 20%). Finally, this round also concerned cross-border cooperation between organizations, with 47% of all applications selected for funding to have this collaborative dimension. Here is a sample of some of the projects funded in this round:
[Original Work] The Open State Foundation- Netherlands
The Open State Foundation promotes transparency through the use of open data and innovative and creative applications. He will receive €50.000 to create a real-time updated database of what politicians say and do, drawn from a wide range of sources. The aim is to increase transparency and give journalists better access to policies information, specifically for specialist issues, local politics, ordinary MPs and alternative local parties
[Great Work] - WikiTribune - Great Britain
WikiTribune is an information platform created by Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia and awarded with 385.000 Euro. It seeks to solve the problem with low quality, clickbait journalism, bringing the community members themselves into a virtual editorial room to work with paid professional journalists. The latter will investigate and present news alongside volunteers who will take care of articles by participating in correcting, controlling events, indicating changes and adding sources for stories that matter.
Google Digital News Initiative: In Greece they are funded two projects.
One was developed by the Department of Journalism and Mass Media of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and the second by the National Center for Scientific Research "Demokritos" and the Institute of Informatics and Telecommunications (Laboratory of Knowledge and Software Technology). Both were funded total with 98.000 €.
Department of Journalism and Mass Media - Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
The aim of the proposed project is to respond to the changes that will occur in the news ecosystem and in the new digital environment with the addition of cars. As our experiences are interconnected, it is very important to make the necessary changes to promote the way users consume the news in this new interconnected environment. These developments will create new streams of digital revenue, especially for the automotive and news industry. The broader impact of the proposed project is to examine current audience uses, needs and expectations, and what news organizations need to respond to this evolving landscape.
The project will receive € 48.000.
National Center for Scientific Research "Demokritos", Institute of Informatics and Telecommunications, Laboratory of Knowledge and Software Technology
The project responds to the heart of the question of post-truth and the declining confidence in traditional media. OpJ (open journalism), called the growing application, creates evidence-based stories, tangible data, which readers can cross-check and examine the original sources. OpJJ interconnects financial data from trusted sources to compose an informational environment in which both the journalist and the user can browse themedly and search for relevant information.
The project will receive € 50.000.
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Since February of 2016, Google has evaluated more than 3.000 requests, conducted 748 interviews with project leaders and offered a total of 73 million to 359 recipients in 29 countries. On this occasion, Google is organizing its first event for the Digital News Initiative Fund in Amsterdam, where 24 teams of projects that received funding at the 1 or 2 round will share the details of their work and their results to date.
Google also publishes its first annual report, which summarizes the first impact of the projects funded so far. From startups to large journalistic groups, nationally or locally, projects funded by the Digital News Initiative have implemented the potential of big data, blockchain technology and machine learning, evolving and discovering everything from subscriptions and information verification to video production and reader engagement. These projects are already helping to shape the future of high quality journalism - and some of them directly benefit the European public today.
Finally, Google announces the fourth round of Innovation Fund applications "Digital News Initiative" starting in early September and open for 30 days. Given the feedback received by Google from the Third Round, it will apply some changes to the application process for which it will announce details on the website digitalnewsinitiative.com in the coming weeks.
