Newstik

NEWSTIK LAB / OUR STORY

Find the story
in the video stream.

We came from television and built NEWStik.io — a tool that helped journalists find stories on TikTok.

That editorial eye now shapes our studio work. Lab is where we explore what else we can do with video and AI.

The NEWStik story The original product
NEWStik.ioARCHIVE / 2024
A collage of short videos from the original NEWStik pitch deck
01First, notice.
Then, tell the story.
An original NEWStik pitch slide, 26 November 2024.
Television experienceFinding stories with AIStudio and Lab

01 / THE NEWSTIK STORY

Where Lab
comes from.

It began with a newsroom problem: spotting a story before it disappears into the stream of short videos.

Coming from television, we knew how much time finding stories took. In 2024, we conceived NEWStik.io primarily for independent Belarusian media. Editors had to search TikTok manually, while personalised feeds and short captions gave them only part of the picture.

The idea was to collect videos, spot growing interest and add AI descriptions. Editors would get a feed of story leads: each clip alongside its creator, context and available metrics. Fact-checking and the decision to publish remained with the journalist.

The path to a product began at the LaunchMe hackathon. In February 2024, NEWStik became one of ten teams in the accelerator organised by Thomson Media. That autumn, we registered NEWSTIK Sp. z o.o. in Warsaw. The project was among the winners at the November Demo Day. Back-office support helped fund the admin panel and other essential expenses.

By early 2025, the MVP was running, with paying subscribers and our first B2B client — a media outlet in Vilnius. That spring, we completed the Angels Band programme by Baltic Sandbox, supported by EBRD. In July, NEWSTIK was registered as an EU trade mark.

Changes to US funding in 2025 affected our first newsroom partners, and some partnerships ended. We shifted towards focused trend research for individual client briefs. Finding stories remained at the heart of the work, in a different form.

Today, that experience feeds NEWStik Studio and Lab: signal → story → video. Producing our own work was already part of the early 2024 pitch. We now bring research, editorial judgement and AI video production together, with Lab as a place for further experiments.

02 / THE PRODUCT WE BUILT

From a clip
to a clear story card.

NEWStik collected short videos and added AI descriptions. Alongside each clip, editors could see what was happening, who posted it and what data was available.

NEWStik / PROJECT ARCHIVE2024
A NEWStik slide showing the desktop and mobile platform interfaceView larger ↗
Video and context, together.

An original slide from the pitch of 26 November 2024. The product interface at the time: videos, descriptions and metadata in one feed.

  1. 01 / SOURCE

    Short video

    An event appears on TikTok.

  2. 02 / ANALYSIS

    AI description

    The model describes what is happening.

  3. 03 / CONTEXT

    Story card

    The clip, text and metadata sit together.

  4. 04 / DECISION

    Editorial choice

    A person decides what to verify and develop into a story.

The role of AI Help people notice and describe. Fact-checking and editorial decisions remain with a person.

IN THE PRESS

NEWStik
in the media.

A conversation on Belsat and an interview for the Belarusian Association of Journalists about the idea behind NEWStik and finding stories in short videos.

VIDEO · MOVA NANOVA

Belsat

An episode featuring the founder of NEWStik. Playback starts at the chapter about the project: finding stories on TikTok and working with AI.

Watch on YouTube Read on Belsat
Illustration for the NEWStik interview on the BAJ website
WRITTEN INTERVIEW

BAJ / Interview

How NEWStik began and why newsrooms need a tool to find stories in the video stream. Published by the Belarusian Association of Journalists.

Read the interview on BAJ

Both pieces are in Belarusian. Published in 2025, they cover the original NEWStik product.

FROM OUR WORKING NOTES

Read the frame.
Keep the context.

Behind the simple interface were model tests, discussions about story cards and a search for a practical way to work with video.

[ 01 ]

Context matters more
than a list of objects

In our tests, GPT made better sense of events from a sequence of 8–10 frames than one of the video models we tested. This was an observation from those specific experiments.

[ 02 ]

A card needs to be
quick to read

Our demo notes discussed video size, caption length and the readability of descriptions. Editors need to decide quickly whether a clip is worth opening.

[ 03 ]

A description starts
the editorial work

AI provides a starting point. The creator, circumstances and authenticity of an event need separate checks before the material becomes news.

03 / TIMELINE

From hackathon
to studio.

Eight milestones in the NEWStik story.

REGISTERED IN THE EU

NEWSTIK

European Union trade mark.
No 019141557 · 10 July 2025.

EUIPO certificate

  1. LaunchMe hackathon

    We applied to a hackathon for Belarusian media. In February, we prepared an early pitch: finding stories on TikTok with AI.

  2. One of ten teams

    NEWStik joined the LaunchMe accelerator. Teams from Warsaw and Vilnius were selected for the programme organised by Thomson Media.

  3. A company in Warsaw

    NEWSTIK Sp. z o.o. was registered in Poland’s KRS business register.

  4. LaunchMe 2024 accelerator — Demo Day winner

    The project was among the Demo Day winners. Back-office support helped fund the product’s admin panel and other essential expenses.

  5. First B2B client

    With an MVP running and paying subscribers on board, we signed a contract with a media outlet in Vilnius.

  6. Angels Band / Baltic Sandbox

    An acceleration programme supported by EBRD, covering the market, sales, financial modelling and the product pitch.

  7. NEWSTIK trade mark

    EUIPO registered the European Union trade mark under number 019141557.

    View the certificate

  8. NEWStik Studio + Lab

    Our monitoring experience continues through research for client briefs and AI video production. Lab connects finding a signal, developing a story and giving it visual form.

PROGRAMMES LaunchMe · Angels Band / Baltic Sandbox · WESTART / EBRD (xMentor)

04 / THE LINK TO OUR STUDIO

From finding a story
to bringing it to life.

Our television experience came before the startup. It still helps us find a subject, shape a narrative and make complex ideas clear on screen.

In Systemic War, we make television inside a game: news broadcasts, on-air graphics and AI video. It is a different task that draws on the same experience.

The Systemic War story
World map and broadcast graphics in Systemic War
SYSTEMIC WAR Television inside a game

05 / WHAT COMES NEXT

RESEARCH AND EXPERIMENTS

Lab. Room for
the next question.

Signal → story → video. Our experience in finding and researching stories now supports our own projects. In Lab, we will share small experiments: the initial question, the process and the result.

01 / FINDHow do we spot something
interesting in the stream?

02 / UNDERSTANDHow do we keep the context
when working with AI?

03 / TELLHow do we turn an observation
into an expressive video?

Our first new experiment is still to come.
For now, this is the NEWStik story and archive.

Discuss an idea
Sources for this story
Mission · pitch slide, 26 November 2024 ↗Product · pitch slide, 26 November 2024 ↗Problem · pitch slide, 26 November 2024 ↗Trade mark registration · EUIPO certificate ↗

This story draws on the project’s dated chronology and archive documents. The page presents original NEWStik slides with English captions. Plans from old presentations are not presented as current service features.