Google News Initiative funding: Nine and Junkee Media get dollars

Two Australian news publishers out 87 news organisations in 23 countries get investment to build video capabilities and innovate with new formats.

Those two companies were Nine News and Junkee Media.

In July, as part of the Google News Initiative (GNI), Google announced innovation funding to help newsrooms and publishers strengthen their online video capabilities and experiment with new formats for video journalism.

Hundreds of organisations submitted proposals through an open application process.

Hailing from 23 countries, they represent a diverse array of broadcasters, traditional and digital publishers, local media, agencies and creators, but all share a commitment to quality journalism and a spirit of innovation.

Many of these projects are focused on expanding newsroom video operations and trying out new ways of reporting news through video – from reaching younger audiences online to exploring live and fact-checking formats. Other projects look at the sustainability of news organisations, including work on new business models and programs to support a healthy news ecosystem.

“We’ve always been at the forefront of innovative new content formats,” said Tim Duggan (pictured), publisher at Junkee Media.

“We’re so thrilled that YouTube’s funding will help us push the boundaries even further and experiment with new ways of informing our audience about news they really care about.

“We’ve got so many exciting ideas we’ve been itching to test out, and this funding will enable us to create them on YouTube in a really meaningful way. We can’t wait to get stuck into it and share our learnings with the rest of the journalism community.”

Junkee will be using the YouTube innovating funding grant to build out their capabilities to support video operations, as well as innovating with new video content that will be published on Junkee’s YouTube channel and beyond in 2019.