The Digital News Initiative is a European organization established by Google to “promote high-quality investigative journalism through innovation and technology”. It includes an “Innovation Lab” worth EUR 150m, that in the coming year issued several grants to 461 projects in the areas of health, environment, finance and e-commerce. The first quarter of this year already led to the granting of seven competitively selected project grants. This marked the beginning of the “digital first” in Europe. This initiative also intends to bolster the participation of social media websites in helping to enhance the quality and credibility of digital news.

In what follows we will be looking into some of the ways in which the digital news initiative is making its mark in the global field of journalism. In the last decade, the growth of social media websites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Weblog has triggered a parallel explosion in the growth of news organizations. The growth of the web as a source of news has been fuelled by three key elements – the growth of internet speed, the creation of video and the easy distribution of content by social media websites. These three forces combined have made it much easier for a story to get around the world and circulate without delay. Now, stories can reach people thousands of miles away, opening the door to new innovations in media production.

The European digital news initiative intends to help European news organizations develop a sustainable strategy based on the principle of innovation. Innovation means different things to different publishers. It can refer to technological innovations or improvements to the content and the delivery of news content. It can refer to statistical innovations or changes to the presentation of data. It is not, however, simply the creation of new products or services.

For a successful innovation agenda, a news organization must have a strategic plan. This plan should provide a clear idea of the organisation’s long term goals and an evaluation of its achievements so far. A working group is used to support this work. Agency of the working group was held in October this year and is designed to explore the areas in which the digital news industry is strongest and weakest. This meeting provided a platform for publishers to develop some specific questions and put forward their ideas for making the industry stronger.

The digital news initiative has also set up a task force that will focus on bringing together stakeholders and experts from different parts of the industry. This group will develop strategies for the development of digital news in the Europe. As part of its work, it will be holding meetings and carrying out research in order to drive forward innovative projects. This is part of the wider strategy agreed by the directors of the CJFE and the EU Commission. It is one part of the strategy for a more competitive and open Europe.

In developing a strategy, the CJFE will be working with its member associations in order to gain support. It will be looking for specific objectives and metrics that can be measured in order to evaluate the performance of the digital news industry. The objective of the evaluation is to highlight weaknesses and build on strengths. There are some publishers who have strong business interests in promoting their news sources and have a commercial interest in supporting the CJFE. Others, who do not have commercial interests but who want to report in an independent manner, may consider joining the Alliance for Journalistic Excellence, which is an international non-profit association dedicated to improving the quality of journalism in the global information market.

Agency Working Group for Journalistic Excellence decided that one of the most pressing issues for the coming year will be the increasing number of stories that do not receive appropriate media attention. This includes the increasing use of off-shore media, such as CCTV footage that is widely distributed across the globe, and increasing reliance on online services, such as Google News. In response, the European Association of Journalists (EAJ) has put forward a set of measures to ensure more responsible journalism. These measures include more responsibility for sourcing and more training for journalists covering the field.

The European Journalism Union (EJU), the European Federation of Journalists (EFCJ) and the European Press Foundation (EPCF) has also created a Digital News Initiative for Journalists (DNI). The purpose of the DNI is to foster improved professional standards in the print and broadcast media and to improve the mediation of content. The initiative was established to increase the role of the press and to strengthen the role of journalists in society. The first step towards implementation was the formation of the steering group which is made up of members from each member organization of the EJU. Apart from Agency , other stakeholders were involved in drafting the declaration of objectives, executive director appointments, the monitoring and reporting process, guidelines and key decisions and reporting.