Digital News Initiative: The Basics

The Digital News Initiative, formerly known as the European Journalism Initiative, is a European organization established by Google to support high quality journalism through innovation and technology. It covers an "Innovation Lab" worth hundreds of millions of dollars, which in its first year issued grants to 461 new projects in almost every country around the world. Its mission is to "inspire change through knowledge creation". As of this writing, there are twenty-nine funded projects.

This initiative is very well suited for newsrooms that are cutting back on costs and resources while at the same time wanting to increase their revenue. The money that is received goes directly into the newsroom budgets. A great advantage to the European Journalism Initiative over traditional forms of journalism is that it creates value - in this case, new knowledge - for the newsroom. In doing so, it builds trust and credibility with readers, viewers, and other media professionals.

The premise behind the Digital News Initiative is simple: provide high-quality journalism that can be accessed online. The aim is not to replace traditional forms of traditional journalism but to complement it. For newsrooms that rely on a single source of digital news, such as newspapers or magazines, this is an excellent opportunity to improve and broaden their range of sources and increase their revenue from advertising. For newsrooms that have multiple sources, such as radio, TV, and the Internet, it gives them a chance to engage in more rigorous forms of digital news and enhance their various revenue streams. In other words, digital news allows newsrooms to become more versatile.

There is, however, one major problem that faces many newsrooms, both large and small. That problem is the increasing lack of diversity in sources. The digital age was supposed to break down the barriers between the media and public - but increasingly, the media are coming to look like newspapers and magazines. agency has become a rare commodity. Luckily, there are a number of strategies newsrooms can implement to improve their digital news offerings.

One of the first steps to take is to recruit and engage more minorities and people of different genders, colors, ages, and backgrounds. More diversity helps to broaden the base of opinion and creates a more complex, interesting discussion. Research shows that diversification is correlated with higher quality of digital news. In other words, the more perspectives you have on a story, the more likely you are to get more coverage and, therefore, a more thriving digital news initiative. Also, diversity is good for business, as more diverse voices provide a more diverse customer base.

It's also important for digital newsrooms to diversify how they select stories. agency is to publish a wide variety of editorial choices - both from established media and from up-and-coming upstart publishers. In doing this, however, it becomes increasingly difficult to decide what types of stories interest readers. As an example, a piece about controversial topics may not seem particularly interesting to a niche audience, but it might be quite valuable to a mainstream audience because of its rarity and therefore widespread appeal. Because the Internet allows for instantaneous distribution, it's critical for newsrooms to spread their content across a wide range of platforms.

The second step to digital news's success is to create a unified digital news initiative. This is perhaps even more important than hiring more reporters. The ability to instantly respond to digital news stories - by posting a Tweet, a Facebook status update or a blog post - allows readers and podcasters to engage with a story before other outlets. For a new medium to take hold, it's important that the readers and writers are able to speak the same language. A single mistake - one that could cause a reader or subscriber to lose patience - could result in a digital news story being completely overlooked by a publication's overall audience.

Finally, a digital news initiative can only succeed if it is supported by the right people. A group of overeager entrepreneurs, undereducated reporters, and freelance writers with no knowledge of the business should never be entrusted with the task of launching a new digital news initiative. This is especially true when those involved do not have a clear vision for where the endeavor should eventually take place. In most cases, the best approach would be to hire a small group of experts who work together on a regular basis. By delegating the responsibilities and limitations of the digital news initiative to a small team, the project can move forward at a steady pace without mistakes being repeated or organizations getting off track.