Media Vox Pop and a new approach with the public

In 2014, I was working as a freelance journalist in Latin America while I realised how difficult it was for professional journalists to compete with User Generated Content (UGC). Then I had the idea of creating an opportunity for digital newsrooms rather than looking at the increasing UGC use as a threat.
Instead of sending a journalist to a given location to interview people, I thought, media could reach specific segments of the public with a video-question by using their online presence and audience. In other words, journalists had the technological possibility to involve their own public within the news production process. And perhaps covering geographic areas that are often neglected by the news agenda.

This idea was selected and supported by Start Up Chile, a start up incubator based in Santiago, Chile, in 2015. In 6-month time, my team and I came up with a first protoype and a business plan, which was essential to search for first clients, funders and partners. The first version of this new digital tool, Media Vox Pop, was used by Amnesty International Americas during an online campaign in support of the environmental group funded by Berta Caceres in Honduras, which gave us a strong motivation and a concrete example of how the tool could be used not only by newsrooms, but also for campaigning and advocacy purposes.

My role of journalist changed into an executive role of a small and dynamic team, learning about technological trends, multimedia platforms and their functionalities, databases, file streaming, mobile and web apps, digital and UX design. Moreover, a constant reach out to newsrooms willing to adopt the new product we were offering was a daily routine, as it was the fundraising process to keep developing the new product. All this was happening in years where there seem to be very little hope for newsrooms business models, as social media were absorbing more and more ads shares from the market, making it hard for media companies having ads as their main revenue stream.

Finally, our project was supported by Google's Digital News Initiative (DNI) in 2016, and I was awarded with the VICE-Knight Innovators fellowship the same year. A successful crowdfunding campaign allowed our 3-person team to complete the first scalable version of the technology and present it to clients in the US and Europe. 

In New York City, thanks to the VICE-Knight fellowship, I could attend the MA course of Entrepreneurial Journalism at City University of New York, which was a remarkable experience to understand the new trends in the media landscape and the challenges of entrepreneurship in this industry.

Media Vox Pop became a functioning products in 2016 and in that year it was adopted by different newsrooms in the US and Europe, and also used for advocacy campaign by human rights organisations in Italy and Mexico. 

The product had a good initial traction with some partners that understood its potential. The weak point was, nevertherless, a business model that did not work as planned. The team and I did not want to propose the tool to more profitable industries, therefore the startup came to an end in 2017, due to the lack of funding.

Despite this startup project did not find economic sustainability, it was an incredible experience through which I learned a lot about project management and the need of always evolve and understand quickly what works and what does not, taking difficult decisions, while understanding how the online public sphere is interacting with the news and its changing behavior. I still believe that the role of journalism is bound to change with the unfolding possibility given by the digital era we live in, and it was a big learning experience to propose a new solution and vision in the field of digital media.