Apps, E-Books and Big Data on healthcare mission

Press release

GRAZ – Every year in November the Styrian capital Graz becomes a melting pot of Europe’s young and creative entrepreneurs. From November 18-21 the EYA Festival 2015 presented digital solutions, with a special focus on improving healthcare. The winning project from Spain facilitates learning for autistic children using apps and e-books; other projects deal with big data and heart diagnostics, & a robotic exoskeleton supports impaired people.

The Festival Jury consisting of 16 international experts choose the European Youth Award Overall Winner 2015 on the basis of the 13 winner’s presentations. The key aspects of this year’s projects were Internet of Things, Big Data and Cyber Physical Installations.

Jury touched by learning solution for autistic children
The Overall Winner. For autistic children the main way of learning is visually – the winning project takes this into account and offers new learning possibilities for autistic children with e-books and interactive apps.

The touching background story. Miriam Reyes is 19 years old and lives in a small town south of Sevilla. As her niece turned 3 years old, the young girl was diagnosed with autism. Miriam didn’t want her niece to be left behind while other children were learning happily. She collaborated with her friend Carla Monguió, 29, who is an outstanding painter and artist. Together they produced “Aprendices Visuales – Visual learning for children with autism” to help the 200.000 children with autism in Spain, like Miriam’s niece.

The jury decision
“The EYA Jury set a clear statement with ‘Aprendices Visuales’. A NGO can produce great apps and e-books very professionally and with low cost. This project is outstanding regarding its social impact, the passion of the team and its high scalability, because it can help all children to learn happy”, summarizes Peter A. Bruck, initiator and mastermind behind the “European Youth Award.”

From big data heart diagnostics to a robotized exoskeleton
13 start-up projects from all over Europe, from Ukraine to Great Britain, from Sweden to Italy, were invited to the EYA Winners Festival in Graz. Each project stands out due to high social engagement and technical excellence. Besides “Aprendices Visuales” there were many other outstanding projects like the big data project for heart diagnostics “Complex Disease Detector” from Sweden and the project “Exempt from Theory,” produced by young entrepreneurs from Poland.

Further projects that were introduced are the robotized exoskeleton “UMRE,” which helps impaired people to move normally, and “CityTree,” a multifunctional display made out of trees that is used for adver-tising in cities while at the same time reducing air pollution.

Austria was represented with a social media platform that connects younger and older students to help each other with studying called “talentify.me” and an augmented reality game called “Origin” which was produced by students of the FH Salzburg.

How “Internet of Things” can improve society
The EYA Festival 2015 took place under the theme “Internet of Things – Improving Society”.
Numerous successful entrepreneurs and business leaders like Nigel Hickson, vice president at ICANN Europe, or Manar Alhashash, e-content entrepreneur from Kuwait, shared their success stories with the young creative minds.

Cristina Birsan, campaign coordinator of the UNV International Volunteer Day, summarizes the special “EYA-spirit“: “Normally you go to an event, take the –for you – best out of it and leave, but not with EYA events: you gain so much personally and professionally that you can’t wait to return!”

Photographs: http://on.fb.me/1NcTnEa


Find a full list of the winning projects and more information on eu-youthaward.org.

Save the date for next year’s festival in your calendar – EYA Festival 2016, November 23-26.

Contact: eya@icnm.net | T: +43 660 63 04 08-2 | #EYA2015

BPN 1716: Internationalisation of the four main Dutch publishers

Surfing in my digital archive I noticed that this month 31 years ago I wrote an article on the internationalisation of the four main Dutch publishers: Elsevier, VNU, Kluwer and Wolters-Samsom Group. They mainly aimed at expanding in the US, but also aimed at getting into new business such as databasepublishing. Looking back it is clear that Elsevier (RELX these days) has come out as a real survivor and winner. VNU turned from a consumer info publisher into a professional info publisher, but lost and is no more. Kluwer and the WoltersSamsom Group have merged and survived internationally.

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BPN 1715: Linguists start to move towards Open Access

The editorial boards of prominent language journals are  say goodbye to their commercial publishers. With the support of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) they are moving to the Open Access platform to promote the accessibility of their scientific results with less limitations. NWO supports two linguistics publications  to exit, while the editorial boards of another two or three linguistic publications negotiate a departure with their commercial publishers, among which Elsevier. 

Open Access

Open Access has been brewing ever since the introduction of internet. This new way of publication was seen as a replacement for the expensive way of distributing the results of scientific research. In the publishing chain universities were paying three times for their own results: universities pay/paid the salaries of the scientists; the scientists do not get paid for their articles, if accepted; universities pay subscriptions for the journals. Of course the publishers pay desk editors, the peer review as well as the printing and distribution. Yet the expensive subscriptions do not weigh up to the costs made by the universities.

In the Netherlands a turn to another way of academic publishing has been coming since the nineties. Were scientists of optical technologies of the Technical University in Eindhoven already using e-mail and repositories for their publications in a fast changing area of technology in 1998/1999, university boards were not yet interested in addressing  the issue. I In the new century Open Access came on the agenda of university boards and scientific institutes such as the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), Association of universities in the Netherlands (VNSU) and the Dutch academic network SURF. By 2004 the online database of scientific publications NARCIS was started. Besides academic support, there is now a political drive as State secretary Dekker of the ministry of Education, Culture and Science insists that in five years 60 per cent and in 10 years 100 per cent of the scientific publications will be Open Access. Publications of scientists are financed with public money and need to be accessible without any financial thresholds. 

Project LingOA 
Now a unique initiative, named LingOA, commences. Editorial boards of five journals for linguistic research will say goodbye to their present publishers, among others Elsevier, and start publishing their articles, accessible for society. Two of the editorial boards of LabPhon and  Journal of Portuguese Linguistics have received 20.000 euro to start up their publications. Lingua and Journal of Greek Linguistics as well as a third journal are still negotiating with their publishers, among other about the ownership of the journal’s title.
Articles will be published by the online platform Ubiquity Press from January 2016 onwards. Besides online, LingOA concluded an agreement with the Open Library of the Humanities (OLH), guaranteeing at least a five year existence of the LinOA journals.

One small step 
The step by LingOA to Open Access is important. It can be made as the academic linguistics world is small and close and the subscriptions of the journals are not extreme. But the journals in categories as bio-medical publications the subscription prices are extreme and might still take some time to exit the realm of commercial, academic publishers. LingOA has set one small step, but an important one to change academic publishing.

Update 8 November 2015: 
Just read that the linguistic journal Lingua has left the Elsevier stable. The 5 editors and 31 member editorial board will start a new competing journal Glossa in January with the British publisher Ubiquity Press.

BPN 1714: Libraries and subscriptions engine behind growth Dutch ebook sales

Press release CB: October 14, 2015 - Media

Today the Dutch e-book distributor CB presents at the Frankfurt Book Fair, the E-book barometer in the Dutch-speaking region for the third quarter of 2015. The e-book sales grew by 127% as compared to the third quarter of 2014. The figures show that the e-book reader finds his way to libraries and e-book subscriptions.Consumers will read more and more digital. Readers dot not buy just e-books, but also rent them from the library or subscribe to a service that offers 'unlimited' titles

A fifth is a top-100 title 
In addition, the share of e-books in the total book sales increased from 5.5% to 5.8% (only in online book sales the increase was from 27.6% to 28.7%). New is the figure of CB concerning the share in bestsellers: "Of all e-books only one-fifth is top-100 title." This figure has been derived from the title barometer published by CB today showing the development of Dutch-language book titles as expressed in titles, genre division, some self published titles and bestsellers share in the total.

 (Sorry an English version of the infographic is not yet available) 

Title Barometer CB: Wide range of titles success factor in book salesCB publishes today at the Frankfurt Book Fair for the first time the title Barometer, with figures on the development of Dutch-language book titles. The infographic includes the development of new titles, the number of sales of  best sellers on the total and the number self published titles.The figures are compiled based on registered Dutch titles at CB and the movements thereof.Mathijs Suidman, Business Unit Manager at Media CB: "With the development of the title Barometer, we want to give the market a concrete understanding of relevant developments. A good example is that the number of new titles has increased in recent years despite the fact that we were dealing with a shrinking book market. "BestsellersIt is clear that the top-100 has become of less importance in book sales. Suidman: "In the past 12 months, only 13.2% of all sales concerned the top 100 titles. Moreover, the figures show that 20% of the bestsellers are bought by booksellers on publication. A bestseller is often a bestseller after its publication, supported by attention on television and social media. That the reader is not only interested in the top-100 underlines the importance of the wide availability of Dutch books. 'Self publishingOf the currently available titles 6.2% is self published; self publishing authors, are possibly assisted by others. Print on demand at CB (a book is only produced when it is ordered) also makes an important contribution to a wide range of titles.

  (Sorry, an English version of this infographic is not yet available)

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WSA 2015 WINNERS!

40 Winners from 24 countries, selected from 386 nominations. WSA 2015 once more presents a diameter of innovation from Indonesia to Argentina, from Iceland to New Zealand. Be it a tool for accurate diagnostics of wounds, a webpage to organize international meetings for you or a political think... The WSA World Congress and Gala - World's Best in e-Content  will be held in Shenzhen, China  from Dec. 7 - 9, 2015. Check the World Summit Award site!

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Shortlist WSA2015

The World Summit Award announces the 97 international projects chosen by the WSA Online Jury to go to the second round of evaluation. Selected from 386 nominations from 86 countries, these 97 digital innovations have been evaluated by the WSA Grand Jury, that stepped together in Baku, Azerbaijan. The WSA World Congress and Gala - World's Best in e-Content  will be held in Shenzhen, China  from Dec. 7 - 9, 2015.

To review the shortlist yourself:
http://www.wsis-award.org/sites/default/files/WSA%20Shortlist%202015_0.pdf

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PRESS RELEASE: 13 European Youth Award winners

An app encouraging people to discover pretty streets by walking instead of taking cars, and motivating youth to engage creating a trendy brand of ‘social projects’ through an online portal are just two of the aims this year’s most outstanding and creative digital initiatives from all over Europe pursue. 17 international experts selected 13 projects having impact on society as Winners of the European Youth Award in the European Youth Capital Cluj-Napoca (Romania).

Two intense days full of constructive debates, passionate discussions and fruitful collaboration led to the most important result of the European Youth Award 2015: thirteen projects winning this year’s contest for young & smart digital social start-ups.

“From the projects I have seen in this competition, there comes out a sense of “wow, I wish I could do that” and the feeling of pride and effort that these people put in their projects.”, says Marsha Tarle, Communications Manager at Telecentre-Europe and member of the EYA Grand Jury.

Among the change-makers of tomorrow who convinced the 17 members of the EYA Grand Jury are two brothers, trying to fight worldwide killer number one with the means of technology: coronary artery disease. In Sweden, they developed a screening and early diagnosis tool based on a machine learning getting smarter over the time. Ultimately, this tool may save many lives.

Although each of the winning projects is unique and stands out for itself, they have one thing in common: high-impact on society through the creative use of digital technologies.

The winning teams come from 10 different countries: Austria (2), Czech Republic, France, Germany (3), Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden and Ukraine. They are invited to showcase their projects at the Winners Event (EYA Festival) in Graz, Austria, from November 18-21. This three-day-long Festival is a unique event combining knowledge, innovation, networking, inspiration and motivation. On the basis of their presentation, the EYA Festival Grand Jury will select the Overall Winner 2015.

Apart from being recognized on this international stage and getting access to the vibrant EYA network, EYA winners gain much more: for instance, students from all over Europe will develop project analyses and each project will be taken under a mentor’s wing for two months. “GovFaces has benefited enormously from the award which played a central role in helping to affirm, validate and legitimize the quality and aspirations of our work.” concludes Jon Mark Walls, CEO of GovFaces his expierience of winning the EYA in 2014.

The complete list of winning projects and Festival program can be found on eu-youthaward.org. 

BPN 1713: The Trouble With Digitizing History

The Netherlands spent seven years and $202 million to digitize huge swaths of AV archives that most people will never see. Was it worth it?

By Tina Amirtha

Driving through the Dutch countryside near the town of Hilversum, I have an overwhelming feeling that the surrounding water will wash out the road, given that my car is almost level with it. So it’s surprising that the Netherlands’ main audiovisual archives at the Sound and Vision Institute reside in a multilevel underground structure here, ostensibly below sea level.

Sound and Vision, together with two other national institutions, finished digitizing the bulk of the Netherlands’ audiovisual archives last year, for a cost of $202 million over seven years. The project ran smoothly and transparently, digitizing 138,932 hours of film and video, 310,566 hours of audio, and 2,418,872 photos.

Read further at:  bit.ly/1Om70C9 

BPN 1712: Launch digital newsstand Blendle in Germany

Newsstands, where newspapers, magazines and a small selection of books are sold, are not uncommon in the streets of Paris. The French call them kiosque.  Starting today, the Dutch digital kiosk Blendle is also accessible in Germany.

The digital kiosk Blendle is already available in the Netherlands since 2013. Soon after the start the service received venture capital up to 3 million euro from the German publisher Axel Springer (publisher of Bild) and the New York Times. The German equivalent of the Dutch service sells newspaper and magazine articles at a unit price of 25 euro cents.

The Blendle formula is new in the newspaper and magazine chain. Up to now, in particular newspapers tried to put up a payment wall, with little success. Only newspapers with financial and economic news were really successful. The formula to sell products at a unit price is new. Variations on this formula already pop up; so is the Swedish company Start-up Readly copying the music service Spotify offering a service of magazines  for they pay a flat rate of 10 euros per month.

Many publishers  welcome the Blendle formula. Yet it is questionable whether Blendle will occupy a crucial place in the newspaper and magazine chain. Apart from this question the digital kiosk will experience a problem in Germany as readers are still ink tifosi; they prefer to read printed paper.

Place in the chain

The formula of Blendle is new. Until now, there were a few services, who provided similar services, but just different; they are the so-called syndication services. These services provided a subscription service to a collection of newspaper and magazine articles. In contrast to the syndication services Blendle sells an article for a flat rate of 0, 25 euro cent. Besides Blendle targets a wide audience, while syndicators  target professional users.

Profitability

For Blendle it is difficult to assess whether the service will ever be profitable. The history of syndication services shows an upward battle. The oldest digital syndication service LexisNexis dates back to the seventies. In the eighties, the company added the British FT Profile service to its portfolio and LexisNexis itself was acquired in 1994 by Reed Elsevier. The service works globally and has mostly businesses and institutions as customers. A competitive service is NewsEdge, part of Thomson, owner of Reuters.

In the Netherlands attempts were made at syndication services. In 1987 the Dutch Press database in The Hague was established. The service was sold to the newspaper group PCM in 1996 and became part of the archive service Fact Lane, which in its turn was sold to LexisNexis in 2002. One year later in 1997 the syndication service Your News was founded by by Jan van Ottele; the service went bankrupt in 2002.

Profitability for syndication seems to depend on a broad portfolio of newspapers and magazines, subscriptions and professional users. Moreover, the income is marginal. It took LexisNexis more than 10 years to become profitable. It took the British service FT Profile exactly 10 years to become profitable. The other syndication veteran NewsEdge showed a turn-over of 71,5 million dollars after 11 years.illion dollars. And Your News burned 31 million guilders in five years.

Acceptance in Germany

The adventure of Blendle in Germany is uncertain. Of course the digital world has been growing for years. Yet, Germany still is a country of ink tifosi, addicts to printed paper. Dutch news services noticed that, when exporting their formula to Germany. Your News was forced to withdraw within two years after the launch in Germany. Nu.nl also found out that the culture and reading habits in Germany were different. In 2011 the subsidiary of the multinational Sanoma withdrew from the German market after positioning  the news Dnews.de in two years, quoting a slow growth.

Great adventure

Blendle has started a great adventure. Blendle is no syndication service and therefore has no steady income from subscriptions and  has a broad range of passers-by. In June 2015 Blendle claimed 400 000 users in The Netherlands. But the question is how many of these only logged in to test the service using the free voucher of 2.50 euro. For the time being one can suppose that there are more ghost users than paying customers. In Germany the question will how quickly the German Internet users will accept Blendle and come back regularly to acquire articles and pay for them.

Blendle remains a middle man in the chain of newspapers and magazines. Its turn over and profits will be likewise. Let's be honest, the kiosks in Paris have never produced a publishing empire.

BPN: 1711: 2Q 2015 e-book sales Flanders

Excerpt of original press release in Dutch 

Sales of e-books in the second quarter of 2015 rose slightly, from 2.8% (in the previous quarter) to 3% of total book sales in the second quarter of 2015. When comparing the second quarter of 2015 with the same period last year, we recorded an increase of nearly 20% in the number of selling e-books. Yet, Flanders remains far below the level of the Netherlands where the e-book sales now amounts to 5.5% of total book sales.

There are more and more titles available as e-books. Compared to last year the number of titles available in digital form has increased by 17%, from 33 344 to 38 855 titles. That is 44% of the title list.

E-books are becoming cheaper!
In the e-book barometer (thanks to CB), we first present how the average e-book price (recommended consumer price) compares to the average price of a paper book. In 2015 the average price of an e-book was only 59.5% of that of the paper book. In 2010 this was still more than 83%. The average price of an e-book also is now 8.89 euros. This trend will please a lot of readers: the e-book is getting cheaper!

Online sales up 18%
This spring, the online book sales increasing rapidly. Online bookstores experienced an increase of 18% compared to the same period last year. It is a trend which has already manifested itself and unabatedly continues in recent years. This trend increases the share of online stores within the total book sales to nearly 15%. Second biggest climber is the independent bookstore with a sales increase of 8.6% in the first half of 2015.

News release: Boek.be and CB

Infographic: E-book barometer Flanders

BPN 1710: Dutch e-books growing in Q2 2015, partly because of subscriptions

Press release CB
June, 17, 2015

The Dutch logistic company CB published its latest figures on e-books in the Dutch language (Q2 2015). It reveals that the number of sales increased by 25% compared to the same period in the previous year. Both the share of e-books in the total book sales and the share of e-books in online sales rose slightly (compared to the previous quarter).

New is the sale of e-books through so-called subscriptions. Subscriptions take in the second quarter of 2015 38% of total e-book sales on their behalf.

E-books by subscription
In addition to e-book sales and loans through the public library system Bibliotheek.nl, a new variant arrived: read e-books via a subscription. Through subscription services consumers pay a fixed monthly fee for a ‘unlimited’ amount of books.

Retail price
For the first time CB has analysed the average recommended retail prices for e-books in relation to the average price of the physical book. The price of an e-book was on average 83.6% of a physical book in 2010, but in 2015 it is 59.5%, downing the prices of e-book with 36% since 2010.

Download the e-book Barometer (Q2 2015) in pdf

BPN 1709: A catalogue of the world

Not many people ever get the task to produce a catalogue of the world. Depending on the format of the reference work, only editors of a new encyclopaedia might be lucky. Such an encyclopaedia should be a picture of the contemporary world and not a reference book filled with Greek and Roman mythological figures. But how do you produce such a catalogue and put it in order? A conversation with a librarian might point you to classifications like the Dewey Decimal Code (DDC) or the Universal Decimal Code (UDC). The DDC and the UDC both consisted of 9 comprehensive categories. With the UDC you could accommodated a document in a category of a document, disclosing also information about the contents of the document by thematic keywords. Within these categories, the lemmas for future articles could be filled in, creating a picture of the different disciplines and eventually developing a picture of the world.

UDC

The UDC classification scheme was developed by Paul Otlet 1868-1944). This idealistic Belgian spent his whole life working on cataloguing the world, believing that the more you classified, the better the world would become. Apart from the classification scheme, he designed also index cards of 12 by 7 cm, on which a classification could be written. As the UDC system allowed more keywords links could be established interconnecting these thematic keywords. In this way a catalogue of the world would be created and a basis for an information society. Eventually this catalogue would result in the Universal Book, the book of source crowded, and global knowledge. In 1934 Paul Otlet had built a catalogue of some 12 million index cards which with the support of the Belgian king were housed in the exhibition buildings of the Cinquantenaire in Brussels.   

Apart from the catalogue the venue also serves as a museum of knowledge, the Mundaneum. It demonstrated Otlet’s dream of the knowledge society and how the index cards eventually could be linked together electronically. The museum contained also a room with the latest microfilm equipment and a telegraph room. In the Second World War the collection of index cards and museum collection were destroyed.

Predator of Big Data

Paul Otlet can be seen as a pioneer of the knowledge society. Internet he has never known, but he was certainly contributed to it. Although Americans always ascribe the birth of the concept hypertext to Ted Nelson (hypermedia) and Vannevar Bush, Otlet constructed a mechanical retrieval system in 1934 complete with wheels and hooks which brought the relevant tags/links to the surface. Actually Otlet’s catalogue was Google on paper. His 12 million index cards can be seen as a paper predator of Big Data. 

Reopening Mundaneum

Today (25.06.2015) the Mundaneum reopens in Bergen / Mons (Belgium) with the exhibition Mapping Knowledge. The reopening is in the framework of Mons, European Capital of Culture and has received support by Google.

In 2014 there is a very readable book about Paul Otlet was published under the title Cataloging the world, Paul Otlet and the Birth of the Information Age, written by Alex Wright and published as a printed book and as an e-book by Oxford University Press (ISBN 978 -0-19-993141-5).

BPN 1708: The Dutch computer pioneers (M/F)

Recently a Delft University affiliated company received a grant of 135 million euros for the development of a new generation of computers, quantum computers. It can be seen as a renaissance of the computer building at Dutch universities and scientific institutions.

A movie about the computer earliest construction in the Netherlands is now on YouTube. The film is produced by Google and realized in collaboration with the CWI, the National Research Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science in Amsterdam. The Dutch film has been produced with substantive contributions from science historian Gerard Alberts (UvA), Paul Klint, Research Fellow at the CWI, and computer pioneers Gerrit Blaauw, Dirk Dekker and Jaap Zonneveld. The film is available through the Google Computing Heritage Youtube channel, where Google already shows several web films produced with the aim to provide the European information technology heritage to a wider audience and to acknowledge the computer pioneers of the past.

Although the Netherlands had a company like Philips with an electronic background, the first Dutch computers came from the university. From 1952 onwards, not only scientists studied computers, but they began to develop them. Universities and scientific institutions even started to building them.

(c) ISSG
 

The first computer in the Netherlands was the ARRA I (Auto Relay Calculator Amsterdam). It was built in Amsterdam by the Mathematical Centre, now named CWI. It was a machine which processed with relays, switches operated by solenoids. In practice, the machine was not really useful. During the presentation on June 21, 1952 the machine was shown in the presence of the Amsterdam Mayor d'Ailly and Minister for Education, Arts and Sciences FJ Th. Rutten. The device had been given the assignment to present the a table of random numbers. It did produce it during the demonstration, but then the computer gave up. Its successor, the ARRA II, was a success. The computer contained radio tubes and transistors and core memory. This computer successfully carried out calculations for the Fokker aircraft factory and Delft Hydraulics. The ARRA I nor the ARRA II have been preserved. From 1995 more universities and scientific institutes such as the TU Delft and TNO started to build computers and from 1958 an industry started to spin out from the academic field with the company Electrologica, which was later acquired by Philips.

The movie is interesting as it focusses attention on hardware. Attention is also paid to the Dutch computer pioneers, not just the male pioneers. Striking is  the story of the computer women. In the analogue era smart girls were recruited from high schools to solve computational problems. In the computer age, these women were trained as programmers.

 

 

BPN 1707: Publishing pics online more difficult for archives

In the Netherlands it will be more difficult to publish photographic collections on internet. A ruling from the Amsterdam court judged that copyright from an individual photographer is more important than digital access to collections. The ruling will make it more difficult for memory institutes to publish photographs online.

A Dutch photographer had started a court case against the  International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam. Without permission the institute put 221 photographs of the photographer publically online as a digital catalog, though small and in low resolution with name and source. The institute is digitising its collection and has already put 70.000 photographs of its archives online. The photographer claimed 50.000 euro.

According to the ruling memory institutes need to get explicit permission from the copyright holder before putting pictures publically online. They can make use collective agreements with copyright organisation Pictoright. But the court put aside the financial claim as disproportional as only 7 photographs had been viewed 49 times.

With the ruling the court confirms that memory institutions have the right to digitise photographs in their collection and can make them viewable also to visitors internally, meaning on their own premises. Making them publically available online is not allowed, unless with permission.

The court case will be a handicap for memory institutions. But on the other hand the institutions do not have to fear extravagant claims. (The claim reminds of the copyright claims of three Dutch freelancers who in 1997 claimed 300 percent on top of their fee for a newspaper republishing their articles on CD-ROM and online).

BPN 1706: Will Politico make it in Europe

On April 24, 2015 the US news site Politico started a European edition from Brussels. And according to the founder  John Harris it will be the dominating news organisation in Europe. But will Politico make impact in Europe. When told about the European move, president Obama said: “I think what Belgium needs is some, uh, version of Politico." Did Obama purposely reduce the importance of Politico to nation Belgium and not enlarge it to Europe or the European Union?

At least three serious attempts to provide a European news service have been undertaken in the past. As early as 1982 The Dutch publisher Elsevier undertook the venture Europe Data. This short-lived project was followed by the newspaper The European in 1991. By 2006 the third project EUX.TV was set up. Now in 2005 Politico steps in. It looks like companies in every decade take a shot at it.

Europe Data

Europe Data was founded in 1982 as a joint venture between publisher Elsevier and the regional investment bank LIOF of the Dutch province of Limburg and based in the city of Maastricht. Europe Data was set up as the European counterpart of the American database publisher Congressional Information Services (CIS), which was bought by Elsevier in 1980 for a rumoured 43 million US dollars.  The European database publisher would follow the same CIS business model: making government information available  by multimedia and at a price. For the European publishing house there would be a handicap: the information had to be multi-lingual. By 1987, however, it became clear that the database project EC-Index would never be profitable s Europeans were not used to pay for government information. So the publishing house with 25 people personnel was closed. The multimedia, multilingual and multi-bucks projects had come to an end.

The newspaper The European

The nineties of last century formed an iconic decennium. The Berlin Wall fell in 1989 with a reunion of the two German countries as a result. This created an EU-phoria, which led many to believe in the United States of Europe. On these waves, the multimedia magnate Robert Maxwell finally saw a chance to execute an plan he had been working on since 1988: a transnational, pan-European daily newspaper. printed in colour with articles in English, French, and German. In May 1990 he proudly  presented The European, but the circulation on the continent of Europe made hardly any impression on advertisers. By November 1991 Maxwell left ship and was found floating near the Canary Islands. Yet, the project was not over and stayed alive with press barons pumping money in the newspaper hoping that Time Warner or Bloomberg would pass by and pick it up. But by December 14, 1998 the dream of a European news service was over.

EUX.TV

In the first decade of the new century a new fresh attempt was undertaken to set up a European news service. With less money than Elsevier and the media mongul Maxwell  business journalist Raymond Frenken, former EU Correspondent for CNBC Europe and former Amsterdam bureau chief for Bloomberg News started in 2006 EUX.TV, an independent digital multilingual television station that covered European Union (EU) policy news from Brussels. The station broadcasted its news videos, interviews and documentaries through its website and through the recently started video service YouTube. The service was acquired by EurActiv, a Belgian video news production company. EUX.TV was most likely too early with video on internet as video was not accepted yet in IT circles. As a service EUX.TV has disappeared between the commercial video production and EU projects of EurActiv.

How about Politico

The new kid on the block is Politico. And they have settled into Brussel with a 40 people editorial staff and deep pockets. But money is no guarantee the operation will succeed. As seen from earlier attempts, there are questions to be solved. From Europe Data it is clear that a business model can’t just be transposed from the US to Europe. The European showed that the United States of Europe does not exist. EUX.TV showed that a European video news service was too early and probably too narrow for a profitable business model.

So far Politico is a multimedia publishing product. Politico is not multi-lingual, serving German, French and Spanish audiences, not to mention another 20 languages, being spoken in the EU. But will the editorial staff of Politico be able to crack at last the dilemma at the heart of the Europe: multi European countries or a European Union?  Of course with Ryan Heath,a sidekick of former commissioner Neelie Kroes, at the helm in Brussels, a European editorial policy looks guaranteed. But was Politico’s report on the taxi service Uber with a Belgium scope and not a Europe one just a slip?

Politico shows a lot of energy.  And their online news service attracts many an eyeball. Besides the company has big pockets and a proven business model. But their Achilles tendon will be in the editorial policy: will the reporting be multi country or pan European? The first litmus test will be the elections in Britain.