Sophi.io, The Globe and Mail’s artificial intelligence-based automation and prediction engine, won the Online Journalism Award for Technical Innovation in the Service of Digital Journalism, handed out by the Online News Association (ONA).
“For the business and structure of journalism, crucial priorities for the industry at this moment, the winning entry is high-impact technical innovation. It’s especially useful for local newsrooms that are under-resourced,” one judge said, according to the ONA.
Another judge described it as “a classic, chic way to work smarter, not harder,” while another said the winning entry “presents a thoughtful bold, bold implementation of a tool that can significantly enhance the practice of online journalism.”
Phillip Crawley, Publisher, and CEO of The Globe and Mail, said: “I was happy to learn that the ONA chose Sophi as the winner for an award that focuses on innovation. Innovation is a key part of our mission at The Globe and Mail, and it’s rewarding to see this recognized outside our walls. We will continue to transform the industry with Sophi.io.”
Sophi is an artificial intelligence system that helps publishers identify their most valuable content. It has powerful predictive capabilities – using natural language processing, it helps publishers understand which content to paywall to maximize subscription revenue, without sacrificing advertising revenue.
Sophi Automation autonomously curates digital content to find and promote the most valuable articles. It places 99% of the content on all of The Globe and Mail’s digital pages, including its homepage and section pages. Sophi has been so successful that it is now being used for print laydown as well. Sophi is available to publishers across the globe to help their content producers focus on creating the best articles possible.
Greg Doufas, CTO of The Globe and Mail, said: “Sophi.io has been a tremendous joint effort between our data scientists and developers, as well as our extraordinary newsroom, who collaborated closely to shape and create something that has truly revolutionised the industry. We’re very proud to accept such a prestigious global award – and we’re looking for great partners who’d like to use Sophi as well.”
In May, Sophi also won the 2020 North American Digital Media Award awarded by The World Association of News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) in the category of Best Digital News Start-up. This award honours news publishers that have delivered unique and original digital media projects in the past year.
Sophi was also shortlisted for other awards earlier this year, including by the International News Media Association for Best New Technology or Digital Product, and by Digiday for Best Revenue Diversification Strategy as well as for Best Digital Product Innovation.
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