MARCO MAAS

Data Journalist / Datenfreunde GmbH

Marco Maas is the CEO of Datenfreunde GmbH/OpenDataCity. He started his career as a journalist in a local news room in the north of Germany. He then joined the (then new) online department of the NDR (North-German radio and television, part of the ARD) and quickly became the link between the newsroom and the developers. He was responsible for all data and election projects for the coming years and decided to start his own data journalism company in 2009 with 2 partners.

Since then the agency is working for all big newsrooms in Germany. The company has won (among others) 2 Grimme Awards, 6 LEAD Awards and the respected ONA (Online News Award) in America.

For the last year, the company is working on a platform that understands the readers habits based on the sensors of their smartphone to playout news that fit to the current context: Short news in the morning, audio news on your way to work if you are in the car or the bike, video, if you sit in public transportation.

Short catch-line: "The right news at the right place at the right time." The Google funded project aims to rethink how news can be distributed to the user.


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