We're just starting to run early tests. Check back soon for more, including an overview of Utrecht news media!
Local news is a crucial part of a healthy democracy, but in an age of big tech platforms it is struggling to attract the attention it deserves. The nieuwstoren is an experiment to help with this in a playful way, made possible by the incubator programme of the Stimuleringsfonds voor de Journalistiek (SvdJ).
FAQ
Why a printer?
Local news media have an inherent advantage in the physical spaces they report on. As consumers moved to digital consumption, that advantage is harder to act on. Using screens to place digital content in physical spaces has become ineffective due to the sheer volume of advertising, an effect described as display blindness in the scientific literature. So we decided to build an object designed to draw curiosity, matching something hand-crafted with lots of attention to detail to the digital content produced by local journalists.
I want to build my own version of this. Can I?
Yes! The incubator programme is designed to run experiments and develop tools that can be used by the sector at large. By the end of the programme, we will publish all blueprints and the printer's firmware under an open source license. Stay tuned!
What is this SvdJ incubator program?
It is an innovationprogramme where multidisciplinary teams work together, research, experiment and test for nine months. To learn more, click here.
Isn't receipt paper bad for the environment?
Thermal paper, similar to some food and drink packaging, historically contains BPA. As we have learned more about its environmental and health effects, the use of BPA for receipt papers has been banned by the EU. The worry is that the replacement chemicals may have similar dangers, but are simply less studied so far. The paper that came with our printer is BPA free. To be safe, we have identified a replacement paper using a physical instead of a chemical development mechanism that we want to test out once our stock runs out.
Is it possible to contribute articles or host the printer for a while?
We are currently only running preliminary tests, but are happy to discuss the possibilities! Feel free to reach out to the mail at the end of this page.