9-10 APRIL 2015

EDITORS LAB NETHERLANDS - FINAL REPORT

Hosted by

Sponsored by

www.globaleditorsnetwork.org/editorslab

Summary: The #EditorsLab Programme

The GEN Editors Lab programme is a worldwide series of hackdays hosted by leading news
organisations such as The New York Times, The Guardian and El Pas. Editors Lab brings together
developers, journalists and designers from top newsrooms to build news prototypes during an
intensive two-day competition. The Global Editors Network has already run two successful Editors
Lab seasons and the third season (2014-2015) is already up and running.
About the Global Editors Network
The Global Editors Network is a cross-platform community empowering newsrooms through
programmes designed to inspire, connect and share. The Global Editors Network (GEN) is
committed to sustainable journalism, empowering newsrooms and media innovators through a
variety of programmes designed to inspire, connect and share. The organisation is a community of
more than 1000 Editors-in-Chief and media professionals from all platforms. It is a non-profit, nongovernmental association.
About NOS
As the biggest source of news coverage in the Netherlands, NOS offers reliable, independent
round-the-clock news reporting, seven days a week, on the latest news, sports and national and
international events. This takes place real-time using multiple media channels including radio,
(Internet connected) television, www.nos.nl, narrow casting, social networks, mobile applications,
games computers and other devices with an Internet connection.
About Google
Googles mission is to organise the worlds information and make it universally accessible and
useful. The Editors Lab programme was founded with the support of Google in 2011. Thanks to
Google, GEN has been able to run Editors Labs for data journalists and designers all over the
world.
Contents
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Summary
About Global Editors Network
About NOS
About Google
Logos and Participating Teams
The Speakers, the Jury & the theme
The Winner
Other Projects
Social Media and Press
Survey Responses
GEN Contacts

External Links
GEN Community Website
The Global Editors Network Website
GEN Board Members
Data Journalism Awards
Startups for News
Editors Lab Programme

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Teams Logos

Participating teams
NDC Mediagroep
De Telegraaf
LocalFocus
1Limburg (L1)
The Post Online
NOS Nieuws
Yournalism
Follow The Money
The Speakers

Ezra Eeman, Head of Vrt Startup at VRT and founder of Journalism Tools
Bart Brouwers, founder and co-owner of Media52
DetlefLaGrand, founder VRmaster.co.

The Jury

Bram Alkema from Eluced

Evangeline de Bourgoing from GEN
Kees van Mourik from Youwe
Yvo de Ruiter from Design Affair

The Theme
The theme was News in Context - developing
new ways to anticipate what users want before
they turn on their devices. Participating teams
were asked to develop new and innovative user
engagement mechanisms based on a user's
context: location, browsing habits, moods, etc.

Ezra Eeman, Head of Vrt Startup at VRT and founder of

Journalism Tools

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The Winner

The team from Dutch public broadcaster NOS

won the two-day #EditorsLab competition in
Amsterdam with their innovative app, News
Stretch. News Stretch was designed to know
what its user is up to and what the user needs.
The application uses a range of sensors in the
users phone and feeds him or her news from
the NOS database.

Jan de Jong, CEO of NOS, presented the

winning team with their award.
The NOS team will now compete against the
other winning Editors Lab teams during the
#EditorsLab Final: the World Cup of
Newsroom Innovation. This final stage of the
Editors Lab international tournament will occur
during the GEN Summit 2015 in Barcelona in
June.

Tim van Steenbergen, Matthijs Ijkema and Jim

Haakman were the media innovators behind
the NOS app. News gives context to your
world, they explained. But your world, the
things you do, the places you visit, changes
constantly throughout your day. So should the
way in which we offer you news. This is News
Stretch. Its based on existing research about
news consumption. At NOS, we've established
different needs that vary in importance during
the day. Our existing platforms and content are
based on those needs. News Stretch clusters
those needs in a single product.

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Other Projects
Trust Tacker: Follow the Money created Trust
Tracker - a virtual X-ray machine that rates the
trustworthiness of persons, companies and
institutions. It uses journalistic methods to
analyse interest, expose conflicts of interest,
explain networks and reveal dirty little secrets.
It works as a Wordpress plugin, so it can be
used by any Wordpress website.
Baboonr: Yournalism built Baboonr, taking its
name from the baboon. The Baboonr
prototype allows the user to find the most
relevant related content with just one click.
(See beta.baboonr.nl.)
Leen een mening ('Loan an opinion):
ThePostOnline developed an application
designed to get people talking. Everywhere
you look, everywhere you go, people are
occupied by their phones, staring at their
screens. Leen een mening provides people
with a topic for a myriad of social situations,
based on their own preferences, all the while,
sharing ThePostOnline's news and stories.
The Telegraaf Appdate: The app from De
Telegraaf keeps you informed about the things
you are interested in when you want and how
long you want. You can choose for a 5 minute
edition, a 10 minute edition or a 15 minute
edition based on the time that you have to get
up-to-date with the latest news. The team used
a native iPhone built using Facebook's React
Native framework. The data was provided
through a JSON REST-api.
LocalFocus: LocalFocus is a data
management and visualization platform which
makes it easy to get new insights from
datasets and to share them with colleagues
and audience.
Moodnews: 1Limburgs app personalises
news based on Preferences, Mood, Location,
Behaviour, Time and Location.
SmartSection: NDCMediaGroep built an app
that combines learnings in broader digital
marketing (MBTI classifications) with recent
studies on needs in visiting news sites (stay
updated, don't miss a thing, experience, form
an opinion).

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Social Media

Press
Broadcast Magazine:

NOS.nl:

March 2015 | 6

Survey Responses
Q1: How would you describe your experience of the event as a whole?

Challenging, inspiring and a nice experience as a whole.

Interesting, inspiring, fun.
A fun first experience, with cool people.

Q2: What was the most useful part of the event for you? Why?

The speed geeking was a nice segment: high speed, very rich content, loads of inspiring ideas.
Thinking and building a concept in a short period of time. Being away from your daily routine.
Connecting with other competitors and participating a hackathon made me feel very inspired.

Q3: What was the least useful part? Why?

The first pitch session. It gave a sense of what the other teams where doing, but the pitch format did
more harm than good. I think an informal presentation without time pressure would be better in that
stage.
The virtual reality workshop, since it wasn't really well thought through, although that still had some fun
hooks!

Q4: What did you learn during these Hackdays?

The challenges and possibilities of a short concept development period.

The way other news organisations work, concepting under time pressure, improving pitching and
presenting.
That focus and teamwork are awesome ingredients for products.

Q5: What did you think about the schedule of the Hackdays?

Works.
Just perfect. Should not be longer than two days. Working 24 hours in a row does not seem very useful
or productive.
Fine, not too many workshops, enough time for hacking.

Q6: What did you think about the pitch session?

The first one was a bit unnecessary. The final pitch session was great.
The questions that came from the extra jury members who were present at the final pitch didn't seem very
well prepared (as far as that was possible). Maybe it would have helped if they were present at the first 1
minute pitch.
It was fun; not too stiff, which was nice.

Q7: What did you think about the masterclasses? Were they relevant? Were they too long?
The first one (VRT) was good. The second gave a lot of discussion, but the idea was immature and did not
match the subject of the hackaton as it should.
Not too long and especially the Journalism Tools class was very relevant.
I think the first one from the VRT speaker was very useful as it was inspiring, quick and valuable.

Q8: What did you think of the theme? For our next Hackdays, on which theme would you like to
work?

It was broad and vague, a little more scope would be nice. Curation would be a nice theme.
The theme is relevant but maybe it makes editors think too much in the same direction (location and
personalisation).
I think the team might have been more clearer and could maybe use a little context (even though the
theme was context), but I think the end results all got the theme very clear.

March 2015 | 7

Contact
Evangeline de Bourgoing
Programmes Managers
edebourgoing@globaleditorsnetwork.org
00 33 76 05 94 543
Karen Burke
Director of Communications
kburke@globaleditorsnetwork.org
0033 69 91 62 628
14, rue des Minimes
75003 Paris
France

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