MediaMatters concluded another successful Challenge in October. In the final of the MINDS International News Agency Challenge 8 tech companies presented their solution. After their pitches, more than 50 meetings took place between the tech companies and the news agencies. Buster.ai from France, who provides AI powered automated fact checking, was declared winner.

Theme

Automation of workflows and content production, was the central theme of the MINDS Challenge. Like many media companies, news agencies are looking for ways to streamline their processes and find tools to optimize the use of scarce resources such as journalists. This should lead to improvement of the quality of their services, better journalism and of course new sources of revenue.

78 tech companies from 24 countries responded to the Challenge. 8 of them were selected for the final. They could present their solution to an audience of more than 20 news agencies from around the world. The solutions varied from AI powered automated fact checking to automated data visuals. The companies that participated in the final were: BotTalk (Germany), Buster.ai (France), Datamatic (Czech Republic), Geneea (Czech Republic), Krzana (UK), Labsense (France), Loomi (UK) and smartocto (The Netherlands).

Results

There were a lot of enthusiastic reactions after the Challenge final from both news agencies and tech companies. But it's too early to tell if the meetings between news agencies and tech companies will lead to concrete projects. There were a lot of follow-up meetings planned to explore further steps. If there are any results to report, we will keep you updated here.

The final of the MINDS International News Agency Challenge was already the 12th event organized by MediaMatters. 125 startups and scale-ups and more than 50 media companies from all over the world participated in these events. if you want to know more about our MatchMaking Events or Challenges, send us a mail.

The final of this Challenge was originally planned as an offline event in Helsinki in April. Due to COVID-19 this was postponed and changed to an online event. For the final we used the platform of the Finnish company Dealroom Events.