DigitalSENSE Business News:
The two-day first newsroom hackathon scheduled for Cape Town, would play host to both editors and hackers in collaboration with the Global Editors Network, the African Media Initiative and Google.
Confirming this to DigitalSENSE Business News, the
chief executive officer, 24.com, Mr. Geoff Cohen, disclosed that this weekend, September
6 -7, 2013, the two-day Editors’ Lab
would see 14 teams from across South Africa compete to build the most
innovative news-driven mobile app or website, with expert support from the
initiative’s sponsors and organisers.
DigitalSENSE
Business News recalls that hitherto Editors’ Labs have been hosted at
world-renowned newsrooms including the New York Times in the USA, the Guardian
in the UK, El Pais in Spain, and 17 other international thought-leader
media.
The Cape Town hackathon, Cohen said, would be hosted at
24.com’s digital headquarters, and all of South Africa’s major news
organisations are expected to send in teams, with three persons each to consist
of a journalist, a designer and a developer.
“They will use public data or other content to build mobile
apps or digital tools that help audiences become ‘active citizens’ by better
understanding or engaging with the world around them,” he said.
24.com’s parent company, Media24, believes that digital
innovation is so important to the future of journalism that it is sending
separate teams from its Media24 Digital News, Media24 Magazines Digital
Division, News24, and City Press divisions.
Other media who are sending teams include BDFM (the publishers of
Business Day and Financial Mail), the Cape Times, Daily Maverick, the
Eyewitness News (from Talk Radio 702 and CapeTalk FM), the Oxpeckers Center for
Environmental Investigative Journalism, SABC Digital News, the South African
Press Association (Sapa), the Sunday Times, and West Cape News. The Johannesburg chapter of digital newsroom
pioneers, Hacks/Hackers, is also sending a team.
Preliminary ideas submitted by teams range from mobile apps
to help citizens report corruption / bribes or potholes, to tools for helping
citizens track election promises made by politicians, and tools for choosing
schools and then monitoring their performance.
The best projects built at the hackathon will be in line to
win R20,000 in cash, as well as tickets to the next GEN Summit in Barcelona,
Spain, in June 2014. There, the South
Africa winners will compete against their counterparts from around the world,
at the annual Editors Lab Hackathon.
Google’s global lead
for media outreach, Nicholas Whitaker, and his Code for South Africa
counterpart, Adi Eyal, will present masterclasses at the Cape Town Editors’
Lab. The local judges include Memeburn
editor Michelle Atagana, GEN deputy director Antoine Laurent, and AMI chief
strategist, Justin Arenstein. Arenstein
is also a judge in the Global Data Journalism Awards.
AMI’s Code for Africa laboratories in South Africa and Kenya
will help teams turn their ideas and rough prototypes into real newsroom
products after the hackathon.
“The main objective of the Editors' Lab is to produce new
and open journalistic tools, and to promote a culture of innovation within
newsrooms. Their mission statement couldn’t lie closer to that of 24.com’s so
it was a simple decision to host the event,” he said.
GEN Deputy Director Antoine Laurent manages the global
Editors’ Lab program, and says: “Newsrooms have to systematize a new kind of
innovation process in order to produce new apps, interactive content, data
visualization and newsgaming projects. Newsrooms need to be in a sort of
permanent BETA mode. The GEN Editors Lab programme of Hackdays is a kind of
world cup of innovation in journalism, travelling the world to meet the
community of newsroom innovators and give them the attention and the credit
they deserve - and to share experiences among their counterparts around the
world. I am excited to see which team will win this Hackday and come to the
final Hackathon at the GEN Summit in Barcelona next June!”
AMI’s Justin Arenstein manages the continent’s largest
newsroom innovation program, and says: “Mobile phones and the mobile internet
are changing the way that ordinary people live. It changes the way that people
relate to each other and also the way that they find and react to
information. Legacy media, like
newspapers or broadcasters, need to reinvent themselves to stay relevant in
this new world - - and the Editors’ Lab hackathons are just one way that we’re
helping them do that. The exciting thing
about the South African hackathon is that it isn’t just the big media who are
competing: smaller grassroots newsrooms like WCN and Oxpeckers are also sending
teams, as are journalist associations like Hacks/Hackers. We’re hoping to find some great ideas here,
that we can help scale globally through things like our African News Innovation
Challenge or similar support programmes.”
Google’s Head of Communications & Public
Affairs for Sub Saharan Africa, Dr Julie Taylor, says: "This Editor's Lab
is the latest in a series of projects that Google is proud to support, to help
foster a new generation of digital journalists across Africa. Other newsroom
initiatives include hosting MediaLab workshops for over 150 journalists in South
Africa, Kenya and Uganda this past week, plus one-on-one consultations to help
digital news teams brainstorm new projects. We're also excited to support
African newsrooms that are experimenting with live streaming, audience
engagement, and online journalistic tools. Last but not least, Google is a
founder sponsor of the annual African News Innovation Challenge, which gives
seed grants to start-up media projects." DigitalSENSE Business News
... Making SENSE of digital revolution!
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