Pitch Showcase: Let’s Hear Your Wildest Product Idea for Journalism

ONA is a place where ideas are generated, both the practical and the visionary. For this session, registered attendees can submit their boldest product ideas below. ONA staff will select the best ideas balancing creativity and product potential.

Successful submitters will workshop with peers in the Midway, then present to a panel of judges representing start-up accelerator programs, foundations and research and development labs in news. The goal is to provide fun and honest feedback about how Big Ideas get started, and insights into how they get shaped into meaningful products.

This is for fun (sorry, no capital investments here!), so don’t hold back. Maybe your idea is a newsletter so hyper-tailored that it only fits a single subscriber … at $250,000 a year; maybe it’s a mind-bending application of theoretical physics to journalism tech; maybe it’s an interactive theme park ride. We *will* crown a winner, who will receive a small prize.

Pitchers:

• Alex Eggerking: Make America Make Sense Again
• Thomas Seymat: Sandox360 hopes to help storytellers and advertisers alike make immersive journalism more engaging and more sustainable by providing content creators with a tool to easily gather audience research on immersive 360/VR content
• Justin Arenstein: We propose to set up a “test tube journalism” hub in Nairobi to match African journalists with scientists and technologists who can help them investigate the quality of everything from air and water to food and medicines across the continent
• Eva Scazzero: The traditional “buddy system” gets a digital makeup with a tool you can text when in a potentially dangerous or uncomfortable situation. Reporters send their location and can ask the digital buddy to check in on them. The tool monitors response time, if it doesn’t hear from you it will contact people you know who can help.

This session is designed for:

• Those interested in how funders and managers help shape big notions into practical ideas
• Newsroom innovators who enjoy hearing fresh, imaginative ideas
• Anyone looking for a laid-back, fun and inspiring way to end a packed day

Moderators

Corey Ford

Co-Founder & Managing Director, Matter Ventures

Jenny Choi

Associate Director, Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY

Alex Eggerking

Producer and Media Consultant

Thomas Seymat

Consultant, Euronews

Eva Scazzero

Product Manager, Quartz

Justin Arenstein

Knight Fellow, ICFJ