United Kingdom Kiln

Crunch: AI-driven tool (Round 6)

Even with ""easy"" visualisation tools such as Flourish, journalists need to clean and prepare their data manually or using a third-party data-wrangling tool. This is a barrier to entry for journalists who are are starting with a dump of data from disparate sources or who are not trained as data analysts. Even once the data is cleaned, the user needs to work out what kinds of visualisations might suit the data and manually attach columns and rows to the interactive template. Crunch will attempt to minimise this friction, enabling journalists to find stories in data more easily and to publish more – and more varied – graphics.

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United Kingdom Mediaforce Holdings Limited

LocalEyes (Round 6)

LocalEyes helps SMEs, by enabling access to more local customers in highly trusted localised environments for brand building and call to action. It will also help challenged local news publishers in continuing to provide local journalism by monetising more of their inventory direct to the end user at higher yields, rather than at OMP programmatic rates where yields are unsustainably low.

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United Kingdom

Machine Learning Service Journalism for Newsrooms (Round 6)

Consumers browsing products often search news organisations for accurate reviews before they make a purchase. This in turn produces a reliable stream of affiliate revenues e.g. NYT Wirecutter. Although major news organisations produce some highly regarded and trusted product recommendations they simply cannot produce the range and volume demanded by users because of the prohibitive cost of editorial product research relative to revenues. This project will build components for publishers that use machine learning to assess public user reviews in order to make reliable product recommendations. This can be made free to publishers, giving them additional ways to monetise traffic.

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Poland PBeM Sp. z o.o. & Intergol; iMedia; Korso; Południowa Oficyna Wydawnicza; Wspólnota.

Transforming local publishing companies in Poland (Round 6)

The biggest challenge that we have to face in the Polish local media industry is the outdated model of a local media house based only on print with static content and the technical inefficiency of small publishing houses in Poland. Thanks to the project, PBEM Sp. z o.o. and local publishers from Poland, will create new technological solutions and build innovative media groups based on a modular structure. They will be able to expand these groups infinitely and this in turn will make it possible to keep developing the local media environment. The implementation of the project will significantly improve the economic situation of local media by creating new streams of money.

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United Kingdom Açormedia, SA, Global Notícias-Media Group S.A.

Sleuth (Round 6)

The decline in court reporting is a threat to the democratic principle of open justice. A lack of resources mean news organisations have scarce time to look through court lists in advance and spot public interest cases that deserve coverage. Our proposed software would do the job for them, scouring otherwise unread lists and finding - through programmable keyword searches - cases to send reporters to. If successful, Sleuth would be a vital newsroom tool that allows for better allocation of resources while ensuring that justice is not only done but seen to be done as well.

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United Kingdom Kaleida Networks Limited

The News Assistant (Round 6)

News on voice assistants is too much like radio still today. However this new medium offers a huge opportunity for something more exciting and engaging. The key areas this prototype will address include discovery, exploration and socialising news. It will leverage the insights about news Kaleida is collecting every day and the tools it built for querying that data to make something compelling on voice assistants. The project will include a report describing our work and lessons learned in order to help everyone in the news ecosystem.

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United Kingdom University of Sunderland

Social Media Abuse Research Tool (SMART) (Round 6)

Masses of hate speech, threats and abuse are published on social media everyday - posing one of the major social problems of our generation. Journalists need to report this – telling stories, analysing and challenging policy makers. But the issue is complex due to the huge volume and fast-moving nature of content. Most reporters do not have the computing skills to tackle this well, while some have worked with computing specialists to capture and analyse data. Our prototype aims to help journalists work independently, giving them with a user-friendly tool to report more effectively this subject of public interest.

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United Kingdom Telegraph Media Group Limited

Thornton (Round 5)

Thornton provides a superior customer-focused proposition of great product experience with monetisation opportunities. With voice, our users can seek and find the best of The Telegraph, surfacing relevant quality journalism that is best aligned with their interests. In that richer, more natural interaction we can convert anonymous users into repeat visitors, and encourage registrations that create deeper first-party data and unlock new revenue streams.

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United Kingdom PinkNews

The Pink News Advocacy Platform (Round 5)

After reading a news article or watching a video on an issue they care about, readers rarely find a concrete, immediate way to take action. At the moment, all they can really do is comment, share or like. The PinkNews Advocacy Platform is for readers who want to do more, to connect them to charities and activists who are striving to change the world, offering them a number of unique actions to take after consuming content.

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