Newspapers are meant for elders. If you believe so, then you need to explore the world’s first digital newspaper for kids available globally, News-O-Matic, created by Press4Kids. The newspaper provides exciting and engaging nonfiction experience, complete with valuable literacy tools for the classroom. Thanks to its technology and fun based learning app, it provides stories, games, news timeline quiz and many more for the kids that engages them splendidly. Marcus Magdelenat, Founder & CEO, Press4Kids, explains, “News-O-Matic is the leading online network empowering kids to engage with digital media in a fun, safe and social environment. It gives young readers a window into the world and a reason to love reading news. We want kids to read the same or almost the same news. This helps them to know, understand and respect each other specifically and become a global citizen”.

One of the very few apps that are being loved by kids, teachers (over 2,000 schools use the app) and parents alike, News-O-Matic produces its own content based on

the current events from around the world. With such unique content, the engagement level is one of the best in the online news world (subscribers come four times a week and read four news out of five posted daily). “Downloaded in 148 countries and used by millions of students & teachers from around the world, our websites have quickly grown into a community of kids and educators engaging positively with current events, books, and movies,” boasts Marcus. The strength of the organization is the ability to localize the content.

The news articles are written specifically for students by professional journalists and reviewed by a child psychologist to verify that it is age-appropriate for K-8 students

Engaging, Appropriate & Interactive
The News-O-Matic app serves elementary school & early middle school kids aged between 7-13 years. The platform is available as a website and also as an application for iPhone, iPad & Android users supporting four languages for now, including English, Spanish, French and Arabic. Five news stories engaging nonfiction experience, covering wide range of topics from social studies, geography, science and more, are posted each day.

Ensuring safety and acceptability of the contents, the news articles are written specifically for students by professional journalists and reviewed by a child psychologist to verify that it is age appropriate for K-8 students.

Incorporating engaging multimedia like videos, slideshows and photo galleries to help kids better understand the news, News-O-Matic also accompanies maps feature, which shows the location of the news story occurring relative to the location of the reader. News-O-Matic also has a write the editor feature, which encourages kids to interact with the editors by sending messages and even drawings as per their convenience. Keeping the importance & end user of the application on top of the mind and considering its usage in various schools, the app is developed absolutely advertisement free, hence has a subscription fee attached to it.

Press4Kids works with schools in many countries, and is diverting its focus just from the U.S. to new geographies. In the years to come, the firm expects to keep innovating and add intelligence and personalization into the platform so that kids learn at their own pace while enjoying the app. Press4Kids has recently launched a 3D augmented reality feature, which helps to increase engagement level. Currently based out of New York and Paris, Press4Kids is planning to expand its reach geographically in the coming days. It further looks at providing localized version of News-O-Matic to create a dedicated readership.