Google launched the Google News Initiative (GNI) challenge for Middle East, Africa and Turkey media publishers on Tuesday.
At the launch of the initiative in Lagos, the Head of Google News Initiative Innovation, Ludovic Bleacher, made the disclosure.
The Google News Initiative is a program focused on journalism that will assist publishers generate income and fight against fake news.
It will also implement an open-source tool called Outline to facilitate the establishment of safe web access for their reporters by news organizations.
The official said the challenge was open to application, adding that the goal was to inject new ideas and innovation into the ecosystem.
“The Google News Initiative is our global effort to work with the news industry to help journalism thrive in the digital age.
“The GNI Innovation Challenge is accepting proposals for projects from news organisations of every size to address increasing engagement with readers and/or exploring new business models in any form such as subscriptions, membership programmes, and so on.
“Traditional publishers, news startups and associations that aim to build innovative digital media projects are all eligible to apply,” he said.
The official said the projects might be extremely experimental, but they need to have well-defined objectives and an important digital element.
“We have long collaborated with the news industry to drive traffic, increase audience engagement and generate revenue, but there are legitimate questions about how high-quality journalism can be sustained in the digital age.
“As part of that, we are proud to open applications for the GNI’s first Innovation Challenge in the Middle East, Africa and Turkey,” he said.
According to him, the challenge is open to all news innovation and will concentrate on innovative initiatives showing possibilities to improve the involvement of readers and promote the creation of fresh business models.
He said Google would fund specified projects up to $150,000 and fund up to 70% of the entire price of the project.
He said the jury could consider unique discretion based on the scale and effect of a cooperative effort.
He said the application window would close on September 2 adding that it would be considered only internet applications in English.
He mentioned the challenge requirements as effect, feasibility and inspiration on the news environment, innovation and use of technology.
He observed that Google announced last year the Google News Initiative to assist news players in their digital transition.
He said the GNI was Google’s attempt to help news players move to a digital future with three pillars in focus.
He identified the pillars as elevating and reinforcing journalism of quality, developing business models to drive sustainable growth, and empowering news organizations through technological innovation.
He said Google had trained over 4,000 journalists across Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa over the past two years.
He said candidates can contact the GNI Project Team directly by emailing meagnichallenge@google.com for more information.
“The GNI Project Team will also be holding an online town hall webinar session to give further information and to answer questions. This will take place on July 3 at 10.a.m GMT, ” he said.
Mr. Eugene Okumu, Google Newslab, Sub-Saharan Africa, said there was a lot of disturbance in the digital space, with fake news being a major component of the publication space.
According to him, the GNI’s introduction is to guarantee that the readers receive reliable information.
He encouraged news publishers to leverage Google tools to eliminate fake news, such as search, thrive, Google scholar, inverse picture search, trends, historical picture, and others.
