Author Archives: Sarah Hartley

An Innovation Challenge for Europe

Whether it's exploring new business models, boosting reader engagement or working with technology to transform newsrooms, news organizations across Europe continue to innovate. That’s why today we are announcing the first Google News Initiative Innovation Challenge for the region, designed to provide support for some of the small and medium-sized organizations which provide credible information when it’s needed most.

This new program follows the GNI’s previous initiative for the region, the Digital News Innovation Fund. The DNI Fund supported 662 ambitious projects in digital journalism, ranging from giving investigative journalists tools to collaborate across borders, to creating open-source software that helps independent journalism business models thrive, to using virtual reality to help people develop more empathy toward others.

Video shows how publisher 444.hu has maintained its independence in challenging circumstances using technology to develop a sustainable business model
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We’re looking for news innovators who want to challenge the status quo and take bold steps towards a more diverse and sustainable future. The European GNI Innovation Challenge is an opportunity for small and medium-sized news organizations to stimulate innovation in news.

Video reveals how a team of independent journalists in Slovakia created REMP, an open-source subscriber-based funding platform.
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How the Innovation Challenge works

The Innovation Challenge is open to established publishers, online-only players, news startups, collaborative partnerships and freelancers based in Europe. Eligible applicants should have newsrooms with fewer than 50 full-time journalists. (Publishers employing more than 50 full-time journalists can still apply and will be considered subject to Google’s discretion.) Funding is available for projects up to a maximum of €150,000. For more information on eligible projects, criteria and funding, see our website.

Apply now

We’re on the lookout for great ideas. Do you want to launch a new news product? Have a never-tested-before approach to increase quality in journalism? Or do you want to find a new way to diversify your revenue? See the Innovation Challenge website for full details about the countries, criteria and funding as well as application forms.

Applications, in English, must be made online via our website and are open until May 31, 2022 at 23:59 GMT. As part of the application process, applicants are required to produce an explanatory slide deck (please note, clicking the link opens a new page which offers a download to make your own copy of the template to work in). We will also be holding an online town hall on Wednesday, April 13 at 1pm GMT with a live presentation with the opportunity to ask questions. We’ll announce recipients later in the year.

It’s time to experiment and try something novel. Please submit your applications now.

Seeking news innovators in the Middle East, Turkey & Africa

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From Kenya to Lebanon, innovation lies at the heart of the many news organizations across the Middle East, Turkey and Africa where we are today inviting applications for the Innovation Challenges program.

As part of our ongoing commitment to support the news industry around the world, we are launching our third Google News Initiative Innovation Challenge in the region. Funding up to $150,000 is available via this open call for any digital innovative project and all news providers are eligible, regardless of size.

Pulse from Nigeria talking about their innovation journey.
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The program has been running in the region since 2019 and the first two rounds saw 43 projects selected from 18 countries. Those recipients answered a call for projects which would increase reader engagement and/or explore new business models. The ideas ranged from novel membership strategies to Arabic language search tools.

A video showing publishers Whitebeard, L’Orient de Jour and Daraj Media in Lebanon speaking about their businesses
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Successful past recipients include those featured in the videos on this blogpost as well as:

  • Eco-Nai+ from Ripples in Nigeria is the first digital geojournalism platform for the country. Geojournalism is a form of data journalism which takes information from users, authoritative sources such as Google Earth, meteorological agencies and others, to cover issues tied to the question of climate change.
  • Diaspora par TelQuel from TelQuel Digital in Morocco is a diaspora subscription platform for Morrocans of the world, publishing original content, practical guides, and history articles for audiences viewing abroad: mainly France (35%), Canada (9%) and Belgium (8%).
  • My Town, My News from ynet in Israel is a newsroom tool which helps journalists create multiple hyperlocal stories individualized to specific locations across the country to provide statistical information such as COVID-19 rates or vaccination figures.

You can find out more about all the previous recipients on the website.

How to apply

Applications are open from now until Tuesday, April 5 2022. Established publishers, online-only players, news startups, publisher consortia, freelancers, press agencies, broadcasters and local industry associations are all eligible to apply.

Projects will be evaluated against five criteria: innovation, impact on news ecosystem, diversity, equity and inclusion; inspiration; and feasibility. The range of projects could be varied — we are intentionally not being prescriptive and instead welcome your boldest ideas. This could be anything from using Artificial Intelligence in the newsroom to diversifying your business model or figuring out ways to increase audience engagement or even reach new audiences. Whatever it is, we want to hear your sharpest solutions to the challenges faced on the ground.

The selected projects will be eligible to receive up to $150,000, not to exceed 70% of the total project cost. Please note that Google does not take any equity or intellectual property rights in any projects or submissions.

Applications must be made online via our website and are open until Tuesday, April 5 2022 at 23:59 GMT. As part of the application process, applicants are required to produce an explanatory slidedeck (please note the link opens a page to make your own copy to work in). We will also be holding an online town hall on Tuesday, March 8 at 10am GMT with a live presentation and the opportunity to ask questions.

We are looking forward to seeing fresh ideas come out of the Middle East, Turkey and Africa, a region rich with talent, potential and opportunity. For more information about the challenge, visit g.co/newsinnovation.

22 news innovators from the Middle East, Turkey and Africa

During a 14-year career as a journalist, Dina Aboughazala reported on issues impacting people's lives across the Middle East. But she found that many existing news services concentrated on what was happening in big cities, while lesser-known areas were often ignored. To highlight undiscovered voices with interesting stories to tell, last year Aboughazala started the journalism platform Egab.

Egab, which connects journalists from the Middle East and Africa to international media outlets, is one of 22 successful recipients for the Google News Initiative’s second Middle East, Turkey and Africa Innovation Challenge.

It will use the funding to build a platform for contributions. “This means we can empower more local journalists across the Middle East and Africa to tell diverse stories about their communities to global audiences: stories that defy stereotypes, represent our part of the world more fairly and engage more audiences,” Aboughazala says. “We will now be able to do that at a larger scale through the online platform we will be building.”

We launched an open call for applications in February and received 329 applications from 35 countries. A rigorous review, a round of interviews and a final jury selection process followed.

Today, we’re announcing $2.1 million in funding to projects and initiatives in 14 different countries. Recipients include startups and online-only media platforms alongside some of the bigger names in news across the region, and cover topics ranging from audience development to virtual reality storytelling. We placed an emphasis on projects that reflect and demonstrate a commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion in the news industry.

Here are just a few of the recipients (you can find the full list on our website):

  • Messenger Reader Revenue: The Standard Group in Kenya is going to integrate bots and Artificial Intelligence (AI) onto a WhatsApp number so that its audience can prompt and interact with it to access news. Via a subscription, the uniquely curated content will feature categories such as farming and investigations.

  • Dreamcatcher: A blockchain-based micro-licensing platform for news articles comes from Aposto, a technology and new media startup in Turkey. This will mean news outlets can tap into a new market of unsubscribed users. For users, this allows them to access premium content without having to buy multiple subscriptions. 

  • Virtual Reality (VR) tours: Frontline in Focus in Syria will bring VR Tours by local journalists for international media and NGOs to help international reporters tell stories from the conflict zone with the help of more seasoned local reporters.

  • Growing through innovation: An audience engagement and membership project from Raseef22 in Lebanon targets Arab youth. The team plans to enhance audience engagement with dynamic story formats, podcasts and a membership program to explore new reader revenue.

  • Data for Morocco: A public platform to collect economic and financial data comes from online-only publisher Société des Nouveaux Médias. This will make basic datasets accessible to all readers as well as create specific offers to subscribers and clients through personalized dashboards, real time updates and market analysis.

We’ll be following their progress alongside the previous recipients who are already impacting the news ecosystem with initiatives that increase reader engagement and make for a more sustainable future of news.


22 news innovators from the Middle East, Turkey and Africa

During a 14-year career as a journalist, Dina Aboughazala reported on issues impacting people's lives across the Middle East. But she found that many existing news services concentrated on what was happening in big cities, while lesser-known areas were often ignored. To highlight undiscovered voices with interesting stories to tell, last year Aboughazala started the journalism platform Egab.

Egab, which connects journalists from the Middle East and Africa to international media outlets, is one of 22 successful recipients for the Google News Initiative’s second Middle East, Turkey and Africa Innovation Challenge.

It will use the funding to build a platform for contributions. “This means we can empower more local journalists across the Middle East and Africa to tell diverse stories about their communities to global audiences: stories that defy stereotypes, represent our part of the world more fairly and engage more audiences,” Aboughazala says. “We will now be able to do that at a larger scale through the online platform we will be building.”

We launched an open call for applications in February and received 329 applications from 35 countries. A rigorous review, a round of interviews and a final jury selection process followed.

Today, we’re announcing $2.1 million in funding to projects and initiatives in 14 different countries. Recipients include startups and online-only media platforms alongside some of the bigger names in news across the region, and cover topics ranging from audience development to virtual reality storytelling. We placed an emphasis on projects that reflect and demonstrate a commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion in the news industry.

Here are just a few of the recipients (you can find the full list on our website):

  • Messenger Reader Revenue: The Standard Group in Kenya is going to integrate bots and Artificial Intelligence (AI) onto a WhatsApp number so that its audience can prompt and interact with it to access news. Via a subscription, the uniquely curated content will feature categories such as farming and investigations.

  • Dreamcatcher: A blockchain-based micro-licensing platform for news articles comes from Aposto, a technology and new media startup in Turkey. This will mean news outlets can tap into a new market of unsubscribed users. For users, this allows them to access premium content without having to buy multiple subscriptions. 

  • Virtual Reality (VR) tours: Frontline in Focus in Syria will bring VR Tours by local journalists for international media and NGOs to help international reporters tell stories from the conflict zone with the help of more seasoned local reporters.

  • Growing through innovation: An audience engagement and membership project from Raseef22 in Lebanon targets Arab youth. The team plans to enhance audience engagement with dynamic story formats, podcasts and a membership program to explore new reader revenue.

  • Data for Morocco: A public platform to collect economic and financial data comes from online-only publisher Société des Nouveaux Médias. This will make basic datasets accessible to all readers as well as create specific offers to subscribers and clients through personalized dashboards, real time updates and market analysis.

We’ll be following their progress alongside the previous recipients who are already impacting the news ecosystem with initiatives that increase reader engagement and make for a more sustainable future of news.


Funding 21 news projects in the Middle East, Africa and Turkey

Finding new and meaningful ways to engage readers is a hot topic for news organizations of any size, and the first Google News Initiative (GNI) Innovation Challenge for the Middle East, Turkey and Africa prompted a myriad of different approaches. The GNI Innovation Challenges,  part of Google’s $300 million commitment to help journalism thrive in the digital age, saw news innovators step forward with new thinking. In South Africa, Daily Maverick proposed a “relevancy engine” that would aggregate data feeds about reader behavior for small and medium publishers. In Jordan, podcast startup Sowt looked to tackle the challenge with a new hosting platform for news podcasts.


We launched the Middle East, Turkey and Africa Innovation Challenge last June, and received 527 applications from 35 countries. After a rigorous review, a round of interviews and a final jury selection process, we selected 21 projects from 13 countries to receive $1.93 million in funding.


The call for applications listed four criteria: impact, feasibility, innovation and inspiration, and the successful projects clearly demonstrated all four. Here are just a few of the awardees (you can find the full list on our website):


  • Demirören Teknoloji Anonim Şirketi in Turkey wants to solve the tagging process for the Turkish language to help with the news discovery distribution process. Currently this work requires cumbersome manual work from their journalists, taking a precious share of their time. 

  • Daily news publisher Israel Hayom will be creating a loyalty scheme where online users get real-life rewards in the form of tickets or money-saving offers. 

  • Nas News wants to engage Iraq’s citizens in video debates for positive change with a mobile-first social and news platform that allows users to read and debate on local and national topics.

  • L'Orient le Jour in Lebanon wants to build a new loyalty plan to offer special and personalized privileges to subscribers via an interactive platform.

  • The National in the UAE will develop a service that converts quality text news into audio in real time, in both English and Arabic.

  • Ringier Africa Digital Publishing in Nigeria will be increasing personalization across their platform using a blend of prediction, recommendation and local information pages to increase user engagement.

A second round of theMiddle East, Turkey and Africa Innovation Challenge will open for applications later in the year: Watch for details on our website.