Corporate news 17.11.2016 17:01

STA among Google media innovation grant winners

Ljubljana, 17 November - US technology giant Google has provided a media innovation grant to a project with which the Slovenian Press Agency (STA) and Slovenian high-tech company Quintelligence are developing a global news tracking tool.

Ljubljana
Distant learning proves challenging.
Photo: Tamino Petelinšek/STA

The Slovenian companies won the grant offered by Google in the framework of the Digital News Initiative with an online tool that will allow users to search and analyse the latest news published around the world.

The tool will be developed on the basis of a prototype tool, the Event Registry, which is is already operational and available at http://eventregistry.org/.

In addition to searching for global news it aims to allow users to analyse news by cross-referencing reports about the same event, performing semantic checks and subsequently equipping news with essential meta data, and detecting breaking news quickly.

The tool will also allow for cross-language analysis, with which its developers hope to give it global appeal among media professionals.

The project was chosen as part the second round of the Digital News Initiative Innovation Fund, created by Google in cooperation with news publishers in Europe as a means of promoting innovation in journalism.

It is one of 124 projects from 25 countries for which Google and its partners will provide a total of EUR 24.2m as part of the second round of funding, Google said in a statement.

A Slovenian project was also selected in the first round of the scheme, with the Institute Danes je nov dan selected to develop a tool for tracking the work of the National Assembly. The STA acted as an external partner in that project.