TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The Google News Initiative Innovation Challenge is set to be held for the second time, aiming at stepping up the involvement of news readers.

"This event seeks to develop strong journalists and is essential in understanding the essence of Google Search and Ads business sectors since they rely on the contents that are created,” said Google vice president of news Richard Gingras in a video conference at the Google Indonesia headquarters on Thursday.

The first Google News Initiative Innovation Challenge was held last year, which was a gesture of the company’s commitment to helping develop journalism in the midst of a digitized era. In this event, Google funded 23 projects, two from Indonesia, which focused on diversifying readers in the Asia Pacific region.

The event was held in North America, Latin America, Middle East, Africa, and Turkey, and accepted more than 1,300 submissions from 77 countries. Recently, Google has also selected another 64 projects to be funded.

Gingras said Google was interested in ideas not only from the aspects of program personalization, analytics, audio, and loyalty. The initiative is also open to startups, NGOs, broadcasters, traditional news publishers, and freelancers.

MOH KHORY ALFARIZI