Interactive Newsprint 'Telling Tales'

The Interactive Newsprint project brought together communities, technologists, researchers and professional journalists to develop and test a new way of telling stories using paper that connects to the internet. This research addresses key challenges facing the UK's traditional news/media landscape disrupting the flow of news and information to purely online or portable web based platforms to offer a more widely accessible and sustainable series of alternatives. Alongside user testing the technology and interaction in the field the researchers and communities are exploring new forms of story-telling and advertising and new revenue and subscription models unique to interactive newsprint.

The 'Telling Tales of Engagment' grant will enable the research team to tell people from the UK and international research community, professionals in the media industry and the wider general public about the work.

A small team will present prototypes to print media companies in the UK, India and America. They will link their activities to two major events presenting it at the Unbox festival in India, February 2013 and again at South-by-Southwest in Austin, Texas in March. Lead by Egglestone, the PI on the original project - the team will continue their activities to tell the story of the proect journey using social media tools like YouTube, Twitter and facebook. They will also develop further stories for mainstream TV, Radio and print publications.

As this is a project information dissemination grant the Impact will be the reach and effect of the planned activities on various stakeholders and new audiences. It is best represented by the strategic aim to communicate the innovative nature of the project and the 'in the wild' approach to the process with as many people as possible in a variety of media channels.
Planned activities include but are not limited to:

Presenting work to the Insight and Data Strategy Director and the Interactive Editor at The Guardian newspaper.
Show and tell for Guardian staff at their "Lets Talk Digital" event.
Show and tell event for senior executives from Trinity Mirror news group.
Attending the Unbox festival in India and SXSW in Texas to show work to designers, academics and technologists.
To produce new video material for YouTube and to instigate a social media campaign to draw audiences to the project online.
Interviews and project demo's with BBC radio and TV.

The measurable output in terms of impact from these activities will be:

Column inches in print media along with circulation figures.
Audience numbers returned by BARB and Rajar for TV and news.
Audience 'footfall' at Unbox and SXSW.
Number of attendees at planned workshops.
Unique visitors to online dissemination material available on Youtube, Twitter, facebook etc.