The 2016 - 2017 DNI Innovation Fund report is available now for download.

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The DNI Fund

We’ve been observing the progress and milestones of DNI-funded projects over the last 18 months and wanted to share their stories. We’ve published the DNI Innovation Fund’s first annual report, which outlines the early impact of the projects funded so far. 

From startups to large newsrooms, national and local news outlets, DNI-funded projects are embracing the opportunities of big data, blockchain technology and machine learning, evolving and reinventing everything from subscriptions and fact checking to video production and reader engagement.  

The Digital News Initiative (DNI) Innovation Fund has been created to support and stimulate innovation in digital news journalism. These projects are helping shape the future of high-quality journalism — and some of them are already directly benefiting the European public today too. 

What is the DNI Innovation Fund? 

The 2016-2017 DNI Innovation Fund report demonstrates how the fund allocation stimulates and champions innovation in the European media community. The report focuses on the first two rounds of funding, a period in which we granted 252 projects a total of €51m. 

infographic_2017_report

We’ve included an interesting selection of projects we’ve funded throughout the report, here’s a snapshot below.

Large Project: Irish Times Diaspora Project 

Uniting Ireland’s emigrants: The Irish Times (IT) describes Ireland as an ‘emigration nation’. So, over the past few years the newspaper has been growing their efforts to reconnect with the diaspora community globally. 

After a wave of emigration in 2011 at the hands of the economic crash, one journalist began to collect, edit and publish first-person accounts of emigrant life. Beginning as a feature for the IT blog expected to last a couple of weeks, the project snowballed into ‘Generation Emigration’.

Medium Project: Decodex (Le Monde) 

Debunking online propaganda: Le Monde wanted to help their readers sort the facts from the ‘fake news’ fiction. Le Monde is putting DNI funding to work to develop their rumour and hoax-busting products to meet their readers’ demands to face the facts.

With misinformation on the rise, France’s Le Monde noticed a growing feeling of distrust among their readers. The general public has learned to be wary of the conspiracy rumours and theories that spread across social media. 

Prototype Project: Butch and Sundance

Making the interview interactive: Butch and Sundance wanted to rethink one of the most enduring forms of journalism - the interview. The team is now using DNI funding to innovate around the traditional format to create a more engaging experience – putting the reader in the driver’s seat.

Butch and Sundance identified a problem with journalism. The traditional interview format just wasn’t capturing and holding people’s attention. So the Amsterdam-based team decided to address this using technology. Their idea is a dynamic video player that allows the user to control the narrative experience, using subtitles to navigate. 

Download the full DNI Innovation Fund report now

Round 3 of funding is currently underway and the next funding application window, Round 4 opens in September. Download the Report now to read more about some of our funded projects and key insights from the report.

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