Journalism is undergoing rapid changes. The digital revolution and the rise of social media platforms have greatly altered how people consume content. As traditional media's credibility wanes, digital platforms grapple with an emerging amount of misinformation, easily accessible to all. This dynamic threatens the very foundation of societal cohesion - and that's what spurred Hannes Grassegger, an accomplished journalist deeply involved in exposing the Cambridge Analytica scandal, to take action. Hannes witnessed firsthand the rapid decline of the press industry and observed how digital forces diligently develop techniques to fragment and polarize society with rumors and fake news, particularly spread on social media. This left Hannes intrigued by the pressing questions:

"How will we know what's really going on if trusted local news disappear? How will democracy function without reliable information and a shared understanding of reality?"

In 2021, Hannes joined forces with like-minded individuals across Switzerland to establish the association Home.swiss, united in their mission to develop innovative technologies for news creation and sharing in the digital era. With the support of Stiftung Mercator Schweiz and Fonds Migros Pionnier since 2022, the Polaris project was born - a startup dedicated to developing digital news services tailored for local communities.

Today, Polaris is at the forefront of empowering all kinds of individuals, both with and without journalistic experience, to contribute to factual and local news coverage. Through their user-friendly digital tool, individuals can draft articles according to journalistic standards using a chatbot interface, add their photos, and submit them to local news outlets and editors. Hannes emphasizes: “Whilst social media has made it easy to create disinformation, we want to make it easy to create fact-based news. That's a fundamentally unique approach.” He envisions a future where, even in the absence of traditional media, their tool could seamlessly connect communities with a service to disseminate factual news reports via WhatsApp or email newsletters. 

During the 8th edition of the Festival of Open Innovation, Open Geneva collaborated with Polaris to test the tool with their community, branded as ‘Geneva.live’. During the 10 days of the festival, participants and collaborators were encouraged to share their experiences, leading to the drafting of around 50 articles about the local events and happenings that took place all over Geneva. Hannes describes Open Geneva as "a great community full of people ready to try emerging technologies, such as ours." He adds, "For us, Geneva is super interesting. There are people from all over the world, plus a more rooted local community. We want to develop a news source where the local population can get informed about what’s going on at the level of neighborhoods."

The collaboration with the Open Geneva community helped the Polaris team to refine their tool by gathering insights on how to improve its interface and features. Hannes highlights, "One of the biggest insights from the collaboration was that we need to set up our own service for publishing the news articles created with our reporter chatbot." That necessity sparked the idea of creating a dedicated journal with news about the festival, created by the community, for the community. Another insight from the collaboration was the need of collecting the full names and phone numbers of users who submit articles. This would assist the journal editors in promptly verifying the incoming articles and ensuring credibility prior to publication. Besides ensuring reliable local news from verified sources, the tool also has the potential to democratize news reporting and ensure more inclusive media coverage, particularly in underserved local areas

Hannes was impressed by the quality of the articles created during the collaboration, and is now even more certain of Polaris’s potential to broaden its societal impact and to play a crucial role in the future of news sharing:

"Over 90% of the articles filed were fit to print and be published in the journal. Our services make it possible to get and share fact-based local news - even if there are no news outlets left. There are news deserts in Switzerland, and people in these places can use our tools to set up a basic journalistic news system."

Polaris actively seeks collaboration with traditional news outlets, municipalities, and individuals alike. Having already expanded its reach to regions like St. Gallen, Zug, and Vaud, Polaris now leverages its own publishing service and continues to invite people across Switzerland to join this new era unfolding in journalism. By simplifying the creation of fact-based news, they are reviving local news reporting for a better and more informed society - empowering one community at a time.  

For more info about Polaris, visit: www.polarisnews.ch