Before launching Théophraste in 2015, Guillaume Vasse called WAN-IFRA to ask whether anyone else in the news industry was working on a similar initiative.

"Guillaume Vasse, Chief Digital Officer at Sud-Ouest, wanted to start a media lab and was wondering whether we knew anyone who was doing something similar," says Stephen Fozard (GAMI Director) while welcoming everyone to the event. "And talking to heads of media labs over the past years, we realised there is a broad wish for them to meet people that are doing similar things. They often feel like the odd-ones-out in their own news organisations."

“Let’s work together”

Kicking off the first round of pitches from the diverse collection of labs, accelerators and other innovation units, Lina Timm (Media Lab Bayern) confirm she felt kind of lonely during the first few years of creating the lab, "until I realised similar initiatives were out there".

According to Trine Nielsen (DMJX Media Maker Space) "everything happens in collaboration" and the reason for Denis Teyssou (AFP Media Lab) to come to the Media Lab Day: "sharsing. Because it’s important." Concluding his presentation with the hope that the media lab day would open up possibilities for exchange and collaboration in the future.

After the first four pitches, this spirit of collaboration was demonstrated by Kim Svendsen (Stibo Accelerator), who shares a Drive document to track the topics discussed: “While I was taking notes for myself during the presentations I realised how stupid it would be to keep those notes to myself.”

During the rest of the meeting, the participants added more than 30 important topics and innovation ideas to the shared document which will now work as an idea-bank for the group. This illustrates the desire to collaborate and share openly among the group.

The ideas ranged from the relevance of different technologies for the media industry to best practices in facilitating innovation, and formed the basis of the brainstorm sessions the next day.

The Media Lab Day on 8-9 September in Bordeaux was the first live event connected to the ongoing Media Innovation Mapping project. Read about the 30+ Media Labs we talked to so far or contact us to share your story.

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Participants: Nordjyske Medier, Media Innovation Studio (University of Central Lancashire), Roularta Startup Accelerator, NHST Media, Media Maker Space (The Danish School of Media and Journalism), Polaris Media ASA, BBC News Labs, APA Media Lab (Austria Presse Agency), NxtMedia Norway, Stibo Accelerator, Medialab AFP (Agence France Presse), Media Lab Bayern,Independent Lab (Independent Media South Africa) and Théophraste (Sud Ouest Newspaper).

Contact - Inquiries

Stephen Fozard, Project Director, Global Alliance for Media Innovation, WAN-IFRA (Paris, France) stephen.fozard@wan-ifra.org 

WAN-IFRA is the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers. Its mission is to protect the rights of journalists across the world to operate free media, and provide its members with professional services to help their business prosper in a digital world and perform their crucial role in open societies. It derives its authority from its global network of leading news publishing companies and technology entrepreneurs, and its legitimacy from its 80 member publisher associations representing 18,000 publications in 120 countries. 

GAMI is the Global Alliance for Media Innovation, a WAN-IFRA initiative to create a global multi stakeholders network to serve the need for a sustainable innovation ecosystem for the news media industry. GAMI supports and coordinates international research and innovation programmes, develops platforms for news publishers to better work and engage with emerging technology entrepreneurs and innovation centres. Its goal is to rapidly advance new technologies and talents to the market and lead to better economy of scales for news publishers and tech companies in developing and acquiring the next level of innovation tools.