3-4 JUNE 2015

BBC #NewsHACK GEN #EditorsLab in London FINAL REPORT

Supported by

And
And

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 run three successful Editors Lab
seasons and the BBC #NewsHACK #EditorsLab was the last hackdays of the third season.
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 the BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is the UK's public-service broadcaster, headquartered
at Broadcasting House in London. It is the world's oldest national broadcasting organisation and
the largest broadcaster in the world by number of employees.
About Associated Press
The AP is one of the largest and most trusted sources of independent newsgathering, supplying a
steady stream of news to its members, international subscribers and commercial customers. AP is
neither privately owned nor government-funded; instead, as a not-for-profit news cooperative
owned by its American newspaper and broadcast members, it can maintain its single-minded focus
on newsgathering and its commitment to the highest standards of objective, accurate journalism.
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 the BBC
About Associated Press
About Google
External Links
Logos and Participating Teams
The Speakers
The Jury, the Theme and Photos
The Winner
Other Projects
Social Media
Press
GEN Contacts
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External Links
GEN Community Website
The Global Editors Network Website
GEN Board Members
Editors Lab Programme
Teams Logos

Participating teams
The Telegraph
BBC
The Conversation
Trinity Mirror plc
Sky News
Vrt
The Guardian
The Times
The New Yorker
Johnston Press plc
Reuters
Swansea University
Financial Times
The Wall Street Journal
The Speakers

Sue Brooks, Director of International Products and Platforms for AP

Iain Collins from BBC News Labs
Matt Cooke from Google News Lab

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The Jury

Evangeline de Bourgoing - Programme Manager, Global Editors Network

Sue Brooks - Director of International Products and Platforms for AP
Iain Collins - Engineer, BBC News Labs
Steve Herrmann - Editor, BBC News Online
Martin Moore - Director of Media Standards Trust
Robin Pembrooke - General Manager, BBC News Products
Peter Rippon - Editor, BBC Online Archive and Connected Studio

The Theme
The theme was The 2015 News Industry Accelerator, enabling competing teams to explore ways
of connecting the news, using and sharing live video, video in explanatory journalism and
journalism in a social age.
Photos of the Hack in Action

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The Winner

A team of hackers from The Times went on to

compete in the international Editors Lab Final
at the GEN Summit in Barcelona after winning
the GEN #EditorsLab BBC #NewsHACK in
London. The Times teams app - One Story enables users to experience a story across
multiple mediums, flowing between audio,
visual and text with very little effort.
The One Story user can begin by reading an
article on the bus and then switch to audio for
the walk home. Each stream is created to
support the other so that nothing is missed
when the user switches between modes.
Designer Eoin Tunstead, journalist Matt Taylor
and developer Pietro Passarelli said that they
were delighted to have been able to go to the
GEN Summit in Barcelona where they
competed with international hack teams from
around the world during the Editors Lab Final.
Its incredible, Matt said immediately after
winning. The Times has now won four Editors
Labs in a row. The team was cobbled together
at the last minute a couple of days ago and
now we are going to the GEN Summit in
Barcelona. In true Times confidence, I am
excited about winning the Editors Lab Final in
Barcelona too.

The Times Team Winners: Designer Eoin Tunstead,

journalist Matt Taylor and developer Pietro Passarelli

Runners-up
There were also runners-up winners of other
categories. The Guardian team won the News
in a Social Age category, the BBC team won
the Connecting the News category, the
Reuters team won the Live Video category,
the Telegraph team won the Video in
Explanatory Journalism category, the the
Trinity Mirror team won the Suprises category
and the VRT team and The Sunday Times
team won special mentions.

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Other Projects
Perspex: Perspectives on the News: Trinity
Mirror created a prototype app showing the
news from three different perspectives. The
user selects an issue theyre interested in and
the app queries data sources (including the
BBC Juicer and Trinity Mirror's own platform)
for news stories containing keywords related to
that issue, pulling in three stories on the topic.
The app defines news sources as neutral, left
wing or right wing. Neutral views are shown as
default. The user can swipe left or right for
alternative perspectives.

Voxpopper: This app from the Financial

Times brings users and journalists together in
a transparent format which could be used by
all media organisations. All forms of video
input could be incorporated with the right API
access, ensuring the project plays nicely and
makes use of existing technologies.

Vinion: Sky News created a searchable

database for thousands of hours of news
video: constantly updating and tagging faces
as they come in. Auto-transcription and logging
of every word so you never miss a face in the
crowd or a politicians brain-fade in public.
Vinion is your video minion - letting anyone
search a shared broadcasters archive for
clips, and take them straight to the point of a
video they want to see.

Autocast: The Wall Street Journal created

Autocast: a mobile app that will read you a
personalised set of news from The Wall Street
Journal and other sources. The app uses
HTML5 Speech Synthesis API, Factiva API
technologies.

Journalist Toolbox The Journalist Toolbox by

The Sunday Times is a curated resource of the
best ready-to-use tools for journalists from
around the world. There are two parts of the
toolbox: a search page for journalists with a
specific problem they are trying to solve, and
an explore page for journalists who want to
learn more about things they can create.
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Social Media

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Press

Ideas to improve the news industry from BBC NewsHack

An innovative news aggregator and an online database of journalism tools were among the
projects developed during the competition

Posted: 9 June 2015 By: Mdlina Ciobanu

Journalists, designers and developers gathered in London last week to take part in The News
Industry Accelerator, a two-day hackathon organised by the BBC and the Global Editors Network
(GEN).
The teams tackled the challenge of creating an app, platform or tool that would improve the news
industry for UK and global publishers.
There were several categories to choose from, such as journalism in a social age, video in
explanatory journalism, using and sharing live video and connecting the news. Here are three
ideas developed at BBC NewsHack
Read the article here.
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VRT-team wint prijs op internationale hackathon

Het team van de VRT heeft op BBC NewsHACK Editors Lab de

Honorable Mention-award van het persagentschap AP (Associated
Press) gewonnen. Het Editors Lab-programma is een competitie waarin
teams van verschillende kranten en omroepen een innovatief concept
rond nieuws uitwerken en presenteren.
De NewsHACK-wedstrijd was georganiseerd door Global Editors Network (GEN), BBC en Google
en vond plaats in Londen gisteren en vandaag.
In totaal namen er 17 teams aan deel, waaronder The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Times,
The Telegraph en verschillende teams van de BBC zelf.
Het team van de VRT bestond uit twee developers, Leung Wing en Jonathan Meurrens, graficus
Alexander Dumarey en nieuwsredacteur Joris Truyts. Ze stelden een nieuwstool voor, "Kagu", die
een handig en visueel aantrekkelijk overzicht geeft van de wereldwijde nieuwsheadlines (zie foto).
Read the article here.

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Swansea University computer science students join

media behemoths at newsHACK# London 2015

After recent success at BBC hack events winning 3 out of the 4 prizes available at the
BBC University #newsHACK challenge the team of Swansea University budding computer
science students received an invitation to attend the 2015 #newsHACK The News Industry
Accelerator.
This was an event organized by the BBC and the Global Editors network to bring together news
organizations (and the odd academic institution) to consider how we may work together and
improve the news industry for UK and global publishers. The contenders included media
behemoths such as BBC, The Times, and The Wall Street Journal (full team list below). Naturally,
the challenge was accepted.
The Swansea University team consisted of mostly people from the Computer Science Department:
Tim Neate, PhD Computer Science Student Designer; Cameron Steer, BSc Computer Science
Student Programmer; Jon Bailey, BSc Computer Science Student Programmer; Matheus
Torquato, Brazilian Exchange Computer Science Student programmer; Kajal Grant-Hindocha, BA
English & Media student Journalist.
Read the article here.
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Read more here.

#newsHACK London 2015 The News Industry Accelerator

Organised by BBC and the Global Editors Network, this hack gathered teams from News
organisations, academic and research institutions and members of the Global Editors Network.

WRAPPING UP NEWSHACK VIII - THE NEWS INDUSTRY ACCELERATOR, 2015

The challenge was simple - but exciting: What might we create together, to improve the NEWS
industry for UK & global publishers? Journalists, hackers, developers, and UX-ers from across the
industry joined us for two rather serious days.

BBC News Hack - VIII

Read the Liveblog here

#newsHACK London 2015

Read more here

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Contact
Evangeline de Bourgoing
Director of Programmes
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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