On 16-17 April 2016, the Global Editors Network and the Centrul pentru Jurnalism Independent (Center for Independent Journalism), with the support of Google News Lab, gathered leading media innovators from across Romania to “The Bucharest Editors Lab“, a two day hackathon to develop innovative news prototypes. It was the first edition ever of Editors Lab in Romania.
Center for Independent Journalism’s headquarters in Bucharest played host to a collection of three-person teams from top media organisations across the country. Each team consisted of a journalist, a developer and a designer. The teams’ prototypes addressed the theme “New ways to cover public health care”.
Considering that around 90% of Romanians are unhappy with the state of the public health system, the purpose of the hackaton was to develop projects that better covers public health issues.
The hackathon aimed to answer the questions: What can digital news tools or services do to address this complex issue? How can Romanian citizens be better informed about public health services? How can we make innovative use of data to monitor the quality of government services?
8 teams competed – from Bucharest-based and local media, both legacy and new media, both public and private, as well as the team from University Babes-Bolayi in Cluj.
The winning project was “HowYouBreathe” showing the air quality data and the links between air quality and lung diseases. The winning team was the one of Stefan Voinea, managing director of Craivoia-based Gazeta de Sud, and Adrian Balcan, an independent software developer from Bucharest. Discover their project and see its prototype here.
The teams from Republica and TVR Cluj were awarded special mentions for projects Liberado.ro – a site aimed at fighting teenage pregancies and countering the lack of sexual education in school; and ANA – an artificial intelligence character who, by a chat facility, tries to convince you to take care of your health and do regular check ups.
Discover all the projects here.
The Editors Lab programme is a worldwide series of hackdays hosted by leading news organisations. The winning team from each hackdays earns a spot in the two-day Editors Lab Final in June 2016 in Vienna, Austria. The winning team in Bucharest will have the opportunity to compete against peers from around the world on a truly global stage at the GEN Summit.
The Global Editors Network, based in Paris, is a cross-platform community empowering newsrooms through programmes designed to inspire, connect and share.
Center for Independent Journalism is a non-governmental, non-profit organisation acting for professional and responsible media in upholding professional standards with an honest and balanced approach. While supporting freedom of expression an an independent condition for a real democracy, CJI supports democratic changes and encourages citizen participation.
Google News Lab’s mission is to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. Their aim is to support the creation and distribution of all relevant information contributing to quality journalism worldwide.