-
Hesselberg Finn posted an update 3 years, 2 months ago
The Digital News Initiative is a European organization established by Google to support high quality journalism through innovation and technology. It includes an “Innovations Fund” of up to Euros 80m that in the coming year issued twenty grants to 460 projects in eighteen countries. The organization also publishes a blog from time to time, where it promotes the projects it finances. agency of the blog is short blurbs about the projects initiated by the respective companies or organizations. There are links to the websites of the companies or organizations.
The first project of the digital news initiative was published by the Finnish national broadcaster Yomi News (home). It was an interactive feature documentary about the Arctic environment and featured a small country of Finland called Lapland. This was a very successful project that got widespread attention in many media platforms. The film was made by Radhall Film, a division of the Swedish Film Association.
The Digital News Initiative has supported other projects that make headlines on different media and news portals. For example, in February it made a two-part news special on the occasion of the first anniversary of the doomed flight in an air crash to Kenya. It featured interviews with passengers as well as the co-passengers of the aircraft. This report won a major award at a global media forum in Rome. It led to a discussion on the need for more coverage of natural disasters. This digital news organization also made a series of videos on its YouTube channel featuring exclusive footage from the field.
agency has made strategic investments in digital content through the purchase of certain software. This has made it possible to publish in various platforms like YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook and others. agency has also made it easier to aggregate data from different platforms and combine them in a coherent way. Digital News Initiative also publishes short news stories across various platforms like email, SMS and Twitter.
The first phase of the Digital News Initiative’s strategy is the development of new online content that would be published regularly. In fact, it has already released over twenty digital news stories so far. These have been distributed to various news agencies and organizations. Apart from that, the initiative also plans to expand its reach by launching a number of podcasts and videoblogs in the near future.
Another important initiative is the participation of online community forums and discussion boards in delivering its digital news initiatives. In fact, it started this program back in October last year. At present, there are a number of digital news service providers who are participating actively in the Digital News Initiative. Among them is the NewsHive Online news aggregator which reaches out to a number of different communities including bloggers, social networkers and readers. This aggregator also delivers breaking news stories, videos, RSS feeds, podcasting and more. This service also reaches out to international communities through an online community.
This is just the first of the digital news initiatives being launched by the initiative. The hope is that more such services will get developed in coming time. Moreover, the Digital News Initiative also plans to launch premium subscriptions for its reporters and correspondents, which will further boost its presence in the online arena. Such subscriptions will enable them to have access to high end digital news services which will enable them to deliver quality news instantly.
agency are also reaching out to the business segment by equipping its reporters with digital news kits which they can use to deliver their stories to their business counterparts. Such news kits come packed with important information about the company as well as background details on their products and business. It also allows the business outlet to place a small amount of currency for advertising their news services. Other news services that the Digital News Initiative has also launched include market research and demographics. They have also launched a digital news service called eNovation that will allow users to generate ideas for the next generation of digital products and solutions.