Google News Initiative and The Lenfest Institute announce News Creator Summit Series

The Google News Initiative and The Lenfest Institute are partnering to bring together news organizations and creators for grant making, training, collaboration, and events

March 23, 2026

The Lenfest Institute for Journalism and the Google News Initiative on Monday announced the launch of the News Creator Summit Series. The gatherings, held throughout 2026, will bring together news creators and news organizations to identify opportunities for collaboration and share insights and best practices.  

The News Creator Summit Series will culminate this fall with the inaugural National News Creator Summit hosted at Google’s New York City headquarters, focusing on revenue models, audience growth, and business opportunities for news creators and partnership news organizations. The Summit will be expansive in scope and inclusive of both emerging voices and well-established news organizations eager to embrace the growth of the creator economy. We will soon announce the Summit’s dates. Sign up here to receive updates about how you can join the Summit.  

Sign up for updates on the Summit Series Sign up for updates on the Summit Series

The News Creator Summit Series is core to The Lenfest Institute’s growing commitment to investing in the news creator economy, with a focus on reaching new and young audiences, creating new forms of news monetization, and growing scale. 

Bolstered by a new $500,000 grant investment from the Google News Initiative, the program increases project funding to $1.5 million—including support from the Google News Initiative, William Penn Foundation, Comcast NBCUniversal, the Esther A. & Joseph Klingenstein Fund, and The Lenfest Institute. The Institute will soon name the recipients of 8–10 partnership grants (up to $100,000 each) awarded to local news organizations collaborating with independent news creators. These grants are being selected from an open call that drew 120 applications in late January. 

The News Creator Summit Series will kick off with the Philadelphia Creators Summit on April 24. This event serves as the capstone for the Philadelphia Media Founders Exchange News Creators Network, a business accelerator facilitating collaborations between local creators and their well-established Philadelphia news organizations. The Summit will showcase the Philadelphia region as a center of learning for news creators and share best practices for leaders looking to replicate this model in other markets. Register here for the Philadelphia Creators Summit.   

The Lenfest Institute and GNI will soon announce training opportunities as part of the News Creator Summit Series.  

In addition, the Institute will join programming tracks with partners from Project C at the Online News Association conference in Chicago this month and with the global research organization the Center for News, Technology and Innovation at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia, Italy in April. CNTI, Project C, and The Lenfest Institute will also release the results of a major study of business practices of independent news creators in April

Sign up for The Lenfest Institute’s Solution Set newsletter to stay up-to-date on the News Creator Summit Series and additional opportunities to participate in the Institute’s free training opportunities.