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Mark & Mary Devlin

Mark & Mary Devlin42 posts

Mark and Mary Devlin are media entrepreneurs. After studying engineering in Scotland, they moved to Japan in 1989. In 1993 they started handing out a four-page classified ads sheet on Tokyo streets. Over 14 years that sheet grew into Metropolis, Japan’s No 1 English Magazine. In 2000 they founded japantoday.com, the No. 1 news and discussion site about Japan in English. In 2007 Mark & Mary sold their businesses and moved to the United States where they opened Kroaky’s, a private karaoke room business. In 2014 they launched Newslines, an innovative news timeline site, which was followed by NewsBlocks, a blockchain-based marketplace for news data. In June 2020 they launched The Majority to fight back against Nationalism in Scotland. They have two children and live in Glasgow.

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14 Mar, 2021

Scotland on Sunday interview

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Mark & Mary are interviewed in Scotland on Sunday about The Majority and the #ResignSturgeon campaign.

We represent the silent majority of people in Scotland, who are angry and frustrated by Nicola Sturgeon’s shenanigans bringing international shame on Scotland. When we left that time, the SNP were just 5 per cent in the polls and just a nutter and cranks, or rightly viewed that way. To some extent the big question was ‘how did this happen?’. We talked about the boiling frog, the frogs in the pot that don’t realise they are being slowly boiled. The casual nationalism and seeing that is quite disturbing – this rise in anti-English sentiment, a rise in centralisation of power in Edinburgh, just things that people in Scotland might not notice as much…The response was very positive and it’s clear people are looking for something, and I think that’s why we’ve grown quickly, to 14,000 followers on Twitter and 25,000 on Facebook.

On the Scottish Parliament, Mark says:

The nature of constitutional arrangement should be something that should be looked at at all times. There should be more discussion on what alternatives there are to a Scottish Parliament and is the Scottish Parliament delivering for the Scottish people? For the last 14 years it hasn’t delivered. Does that mean it has to be abolished? I don’t know. If you have a system that can be taken over by nationalists and used as a vehicle for separation, then I think it doesn’t fit the purpose or intention of what it’s for.

5 Mar, 2021

#ResignSturgeon billboard and aerial banner campaign

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The Majority launches the #ResignSturgeon campaign, which includes billboards in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen, as well as a plane towing a #ResignSturgeon banner over Holyrood and Glasgow city centre.. The Majority, Scotland Matters and UK Union Voice crowdfunded more than £7,000 towards the cost of the campaign. Mark Devlin:

We represent the silent majority of people in Scotland, who are angry and frustrated by Nicola Sturgeon’s shenanigans bringing international shame on Scotland. The Scottish public deserve a Parliament and First Minister above reproach and want the Scottish Government to focus on health, education, jobs and the pandemic. Instead we have a First Minister misleading parliament, breaking the ministerial code and withholding information from an inquiry into her government’s unlawful, unfair and biased actions against Alex Salmond, all while totally neglecting her day job.

Will she or won't she? Sturgeon is losing her grasp.

10 Jun, 2020

The Majority

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The Devlins launch The Majority, a website that aims to unite the silent majority who are dismayed and frustrated about the rise of Nationalism in Scotland, and give them the tools to fight back.

19 Sep, 2019

NewsBlocks reaches Great British Entrepreneur Contest finals

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NewsBlocks is a finalist in the Great British Entrepreneur Challenge. The contest, run by Andy Yates and promoted by The Daily Mail, offers £50,000 investment and mentoring as a prize, and aims to find:

great start-ups and early-stage firms and to find passionate entrepreneurs who want to disrupt and change their market for the better, and change their lives at the same time.

Mark meets with Andy, who is a former journalist, in London to talk about NewsBlocks. Mark:

In the end we didn’t win, but it was great to meet with Andy, and hear his enthusiasm for helping innovative project. We look forward to keeping him updated as we build NewsBlocks in the future.

19 Jun, 2019

World News Media Congress panel

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Mark participates in a panel on news innovation at the World News Media Congress in Glasgow. The other participants included Frédéric Sitterlé, Director of Development at Groupe Challenges, which is creating news products for use in Renault cars, Kourtney Bitterly, R&D Lead at the New York Times, who talked about the company’s research into Smart Speakers, and Robyn Spector, Director of Corporate Strategy and Development at the Associated Press (AP), who talked about giving AI tools to journalists.

Mark talks about using blockchain to price news data:

At the moment, there’s so much discussion about subscription models, and how much can we get people to pay for news. But nobody really knows the real cost of a piece of news.

And the challenges facing startups:

It seems companies really want to pick the winner. News organisations would rather wait and see if something succeeds. But how can something succeed if they haven’t been funded from beginning?

6 Mar, 2019

News Rewired talk

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Mark presents NewsBlocks at News Rewired, a conference at Thomson Reuters HQ in London, that promotes trends in journalism technology. Mark discusses the use of blockchain technology to create a verified, permanent and priced “store of news value” for all the world’s news.

4 Oct, 2018

NewsBlocks launches Blockchain-based trusted news platform

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The Social News Company Ltd. launches NewsBlocks, a blockchain platform for building next-generation news applications, such as trusted news feeds, fact-checking systems and fake news detectors. NewsBlocks starts from the insight that the traditional news article — a form of news designed to be printed on paper and thrown away each day — is not well suited to the digital age of mobile, instant data. The project’s primary goal is to convert all the world’s news articles into data, and store it permanently on a tamper-proof, censorship-resistant blockchain, where it can be searched, sorted, filtered and organised by anyone in new ways to create trusted news applications. Because each piece of data also has a price, NewsBlocks also creates the first global marketplace for news data.

Mark Devlin, CEO:

Once news is data, it can — for the first time — be verified, stored and priced so that anyone can use it to create the next-generation of news products and services.

3 Sep, 2018

The National Interview

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Mark is interviewed by The National, a daily newspaper in Scotland.

Our aim is to summarise all of the world’s news – past to present. We distribute our news through partners, such as social media fan pages and share advertising revenues with the page owners. People can sign up to be the next set of contributors. They tell us what they are interested in and we help them produce a timeline along the way. Anyone can come in for free and read the timeline or edit it…Facebook used to do a lot of news but now its model has changed where do people go for unbiased news? People can get a left-wing view in the Guardian and a right-wing view if they read the Telegraph but where is the unbiased reference point?

1 Aug, 2016

Wins #DellScotIgnite contest

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Newslines is chosen as one of two winners to enter Dell’s Entrepreneurial Growth Programme for Scottish Scale Ups Newslines and Ibis Vision, a company that has a new way to detect glaucoma, receive technology, training, mentorship and access to Dell events. Newslines CEO, Mark Devlin:

After many years overseas running successful media businesses, we recently came back to settle in Scotland. We know that we can unlock the potential in the new media landscape but need to tap into skills and networks within Scotland and beyond.  Dell’s brand and scope gives us that additional ‘clout’ that we can’t achieve as a small scale-up.

Dell Scotland site lead, Mark White:

When we launched this programme we were confident that the Scottish scale-up environment was thriving.  We were still pleasantly surprised at the quality and breadth of the entries, a testament to the future of Scottish industry. IbisVision and Newslines are very different companies but both are working in areas that are ready for disruption.  We knew when we met with them that we could partner with them to help them thrive and I’m looking forward to working with them through the next year on our DellScotIgnite journey.

Jan 2016

Return to Scotland

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After 26 years overseas — 18 in Japan and eight in the United States — The Devlins return to Scotland to live.

13 Apr, 2015

Japan Today sold

Acquisition5 Comments

GPlus Media, the company that publishes Japan Today, is sold to Fuji TV-Lab, a subsidiary of Fuji Media Holdings Inc. The sales also includes GPlus’ other internet properties, including GaijinPot and Real Estate Japan. Fuji TV-Lab:

The Japanese government has set an annual target of 20 million foreign visitors to Japan in 2020 for the Tokyo Olympic/Paralympics Games and Fuji Media Holdings expects this will increase the demand for media targeting foreign residents and visitors to Japan at an accelerated pace. In the context of this trend, Fuji Media Holdings understands that there is a favorable opportunity to create several inbound/outbound businesses and thus welcomes GPlus Media and REJ into the group to strengthen its ability to reach the foreign community in Japan.

20 Feb, 2013

Mark goes to Japan – Newslines paused

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Mark goes to Japan for six months in an attempt to get paid for Metropolis magazine.

Feb 2013

Wecheck becomes Newslines

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Mark relaunches the site as Newslines, and moves the site focus to news timelines. The site now runs on WordPress.

22 Oct, 2012

Benghazi Attack timeline started

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As a way to better understand the conflicting stories around the September 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Mark starts 2012 Benghazi Attack Timeline. The page grows rapidly into the most comprehensive timeline of the attacks and moves up Google’s search engine results until it is the second link.

26 Sep, 2012

Sarasota Patch interview

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Mark is interviewed about WeCheck. describing how the idea came to him when he annotated an editorial by Nicolas Kristof in the New York Times. The site is an online version of that manual process, allowing users to tag speeches and articles for common logical fallacies, and so dig deeper into the truth of political statements.

At first I wasn’t thinking ‘fact checking,’ I just wanted to find out whether it was true or not…I have good faith in the people. There’s enough people out there that are out to find the truth than for the political aspect.

Sep 2010

Lloyd does not pay for Metropolis

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Lloyd reneges on the final payment for Metropolis. The Devlins find out that Lloyd and his wife Kumiko have cheated them out of collateral property by secretly remortgaging the property to Shinsei Bank, just two weeks after he buys the magazine from them. Lloyd refuses to make any settlement and, over the next three years, engages in multiple frauds to hide his assets. The Devlins pursue civil and criminal actions.

17 Nov, 2008

Start Kroaky’s Karaoke

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The Devlins start Kroaky’s, a private room karaoke club. Private karaoke rooms, or “karaoke box” are a popular concept in Asia and there are a handful of places in America’s larger cities. Kroaky’s is the only such club in a small city. The Sarasota store is to be a model for a franchise business that will take the private room karaoke concept across the U.S. After a few months a public lounge is added.

Kroaky's in The Bradenton Herald