The International Journalists’ Network featured a wonderful write-up about Hostwriter following our receipt of the Jury Prize in the Google Impact Challenge Deutschland.
“A recent winner of the Google Impact Challenge, Berlin-based media startup Hostwriter is all about collaboration — be it asking a fellow journalist for advice, staying on their couch or writing a story together.
More than ‘couchsurfing for journalists’
Tabea Grzeszyk, one of Hostwriter’s three founders, came up with the idea for the platform following her trip to the Middle East using Couchsurfing — an online network of hosts and travelers who arrange free accomodations — in 2010. The contacts she made staying at locals’ homes became useful when the Arab Spring started a few months later in Tunisia and spread across the region. She visited the region again, this time as a reporter.
She wondered why there was no Couchsurfing platform exclusively for journalists. Three years later, with German journalists Tamara Anthony and Sandra Zistl, she founded Hostwriter — a tool to make journalism more cross border and collaborative.
Hostwriter currently operates as a search engine for journalists looking for professional advice, accommodations or opportunities for collaboration with journalists in different countries. Users must register and provide work samples to be manually verified as a journalists by the Hostwriter team before using the platform…”