EL ESPAÑOL, as the leading newspaper in the Spanish press, also wants to be at the forefront of developing technologies and solutions to promote innovation and digitalization of the journalistic sector. To this end, Pedro J. Ramírez, president and director of EL ESPAÑOL, announced this Thursday that the newspaper will launch a sandbox in which startups can test in a real environment tools that facilitate the digital transformation of this industry.
This was announced by Pedro J. Ramírez during his speech at the awards ceremony. DISRUPTERS Innovation Prize 2024, in which he confirmed the participation of EL ESPAÑOL in the First Press Open Innovation Challenge, promoted by Innsomnia and the AI Cluster of the Community of Madrid.
During his speech, Ramírez highlighted that El ESPAÑOL urged the different sectors to be disruptors and innovate, but he stressed that the time had come for the newspaper and the industry “to apply history” . “Now the sandbox it’s going to be us“, he remarked.
He I Press Open Innovation Challenge promoted by Innsomnia and the AI Cluster of the Community of Madrid It is made up of four phases. In the first, startups send ideas to solve the proposed challenges. Then we will proceed to select the best ideas from all those presented.
In the third phase, the winning startups will develop a proof of concept in exchange for 8,000 euros, funding which will be provided by the CAM AI Cluster. Finally, the best startup will work with EL ESPAÑOL to implement their idea in the newspaper and will receive 20,000 euros in the form of brand.
Among the ten challenges proposed in this first call are the detection of fake newsprocess automation production of information or other internal routines, the synthesis of content or the development of new consumption formats.
Startups who wish to participate in this process You can register between October 7 and 28 in the form activated on the website created for the I Press Open Innovation Challenge. They will be able to participate in this initiative both by adapting the technology they have already developed and by creating new ones.
With the launch of this initiative, EL ESPAÑOL wants to give a boost to startups in the growth phase thanks to funding, visibility and the opportunity to test your ideas in a real environment with a large audience. A very difficult option to regularly offer to startups.
EL ESPAÑOL considers that the joint work of startups and publishers is the best way to take advantage of the benefits offered by artificial intelligence (AI) responsibly. So startups can contribute with their technical knowledge, while publishers can contribute with ethics, know how editorial and responsibility.
Retraining
During his speech, Pedro J. Ramírez emphasized that In recent years, there has been a “great reconversion” of the journalism sector and also in “very healthy terms” for society, since information pluralism has increased. “It is the best vaccine against all the manipulative narrative fantasies of governments who attribute their problems to the information ecosystem,” he stressed.
Thus, the director of EL ESPAÑOL emphasized that in an environment where there is, and always has been, fake newspseudomedia and abuse in digital and analog media, the important thing is that the citizen has the ability to “distinguish good journalism from bad journalism”.
From left to right: Alberto Iglesias, Rafa Navarro, Jesús Herrero, Pedro J. Ramírez and Cruz Sánchez de Lara, at the DISRUPTORES Innovation Awards 2024.
EE
In this context, he stressed that Technology must be “our great assistant”but he added that for this to happen, there is a need for startups and scaleups. Thus, he stressed, all his proposals “will give more intervention capacity to human intelligence to control technology”, as well as “more power to citizens to own their decisions”.
“That’s the big challenge. At EL ESPAÑOL and at DISRUPTORES, we are more motivated than ever to meet the challenges that await us.but we cannot face it alone. And that is why today we are launching a call to the startup community, to all of you who are involved in the search for solutions that make the working environment better, business models more viable and less dependent on interests unions or linked to the industries which are part of it. of the past,” he stressed.
In this sense, he emphasized that We must leave behind us “with courage, with innovation and with rupture” the “embers of the old world”which in the case of the media concerns printed editions, particular interests in advertising or attempts to perpetuate lobbies. And in this process, EL ESPAÑOL created the first sandbox of the press to materialize all the innovative tools that can come from the startup ecosystem. “Let’s move from muses to theater, to Spain and Latin America,” he concluded.
