Media entrepreneurs get set for the first MADE: Turkey Weekend for News Startups

This much is clear: the participants selected for the MADE: Turkey Weekend for News Startups aren't cowards.

Launching a new business is never easy. But starting up a new media enterprise in the country which, according to the International Press Institute, has what appears to be the highest number of imprisoned journalists in the world takes real chutzpah.

"That courage shone through all of the more than 50 expressions of interest that came from throughout Turkey," said MADE founding director François Nel."Choosing amongst them was certainly not straightforward. But in the in end, we whittled the number down to 20. And they are all particularly talented. And diverse."

Here are some of the key numbers:

• 66 is the percentage who have journalistic experience in the mainstream media


• 44 is the percentage of women


• 29 to 0 is the range of years of work experience in fields that include IT, film making, tourism management, art curating, public relations, marketing and education


• 5 is the average years that the professional journalists have plied their trade 

 

At the end of the weekend hosted by Istanbul Bilgi University, the entrepreneurs will have the opportunity to pitch for a place in the Startup Factory at Özyeğin University and for support from Lab X .

In addition, the MADE:Turkey participants will also have the opportunity to take part in DJCamp2012, a two-day data journalism workshop in November, that will be led by Megan Knight from the School of Journalism and Digital Communication at UCLan, home to the UK's oldest school of journalism.  "If there are some extra spaces available, we'll open up the workshop to others," said Nel.

While the discussions during MADE Startup Weekend will be subject to the Chatham House Rule ("We need to have a safe space for entrepreneurs to share sensitive information in confidence," said Nel), participants are being encouraged to share their own stories.

Throughout, the project activities are also be researched and, in the end, the team aim to share their findings in a series of MADE Insight Reports, said Nel. "We're doing our best to use the grant we got from winning the International Press Institute's inaugural News Innovation Contest to help as many news startup as we can to stay up." 

The MADE: Turkey Weekend for News Startup 2012 participants are:

Gökşen Çalışkan

Sevgi Demirkale
Mine Toker

Ahmet Vural

Halime Özçelik

Sabri Küstür

Efe Cakiroglu

Engin Onder

Arda Süar

Pinar Dag

Ali Bolu

Omer Denizer

Elvan Ozkaya

Hasan Şek

Okan Tansu

The MADE Project is a winner of the International Press Institute's News Innovation Contest sponsored by Google. The MADE: Turkey programme has been developed in collaboration with partners at Millyet newspaper and  Istanbul Bilgi University with contributions by the Startup Factory at Özyeğin University, Lab-X, Talk About Local and the Centre for Entrepreneurship at Henley Business School.