Lenfest AI Fellows at Microsoft's headquarters.

Lenfest AI Collaborative and Fellowship Program

A program exploring the use of AI for news business sustainability from The Lenfest Institute in partnership with OpenAI and Microsoft

In October 2024, The Lenfest Institute launched the AI Collaborative and Fellowship Program in partnership with OpenAI and Microsoft. The program is designed to help local newsrooms explore ways in which artificial intelligence can help drive business sustainability and innovation.

Eleven news organizations each received a grant to hire a two-year AI fellow to pursue projects that focus largely on improving business sustainability and implementing AI technologies within their organizations. The fellowship also provides OpenAI and Microsoft Azure credits to help these publications experiment and develop tools to assist with local news.

As part of the program, the news organizations work collaboratively with each other and the broader news industry to share leanings, software code, product developments, case studies, and technical information needed to help replicate their work in other newsrooms.

In addition to publishing recommendations on AI policy and hiring practices that other news organizations can learn from, the fellows have begun sharing the results from several of their experiments along with open-source code that other newsrooms can adopt. The Lenfest AI Collaborative has presented its work at several conferences across the country, including the Online News Association Conference, the News Product Alliance Summit, and the Reimagining Philadelphia Journalism Summit.

Applications for the Lenfest AI Collaborative & Fellowship Program are currently closed. For updates on future grant opportunities, subscribe to our newsletter.

Explore the projects

Lenfest AI Collaborative and Fellowship Members

The Baltimore Banner
Boston Globe Media
Chicago Public Media
The Dallas Morning News
The Minnesota Star Tribune
Newsday (Long Island)
NEWSWELL at Arizona State University
The Philadelphia Inquirer
ProPublica
The San Francisco Standard
The Seattle Times

Lessons from the fellows

Navigating the AI landscape: How news organizations are creating trust-based AI policies

No matter if your newsroom has an established AI policy or if you are just getting started, the fellows shared 5 key challenges to consider and 5 practical recommendations for establishing a trust-based, ethical AI policy.

The Philadelphia Inquirer has been publishing for more than 190 years. Here’s how it built an AI-driven research tool to unlock its archives.

Through its participation in the Microsoft AI Development Acceleration Program Hackathon, The Inquirer created AI-powered research assistant that can quickly navigate its archives and summarize the findings. The tool was designed to understand journalists’ natural language queries, retrieve highly relevant information from across the archives, and synthesize the results into coherent, insightful responses.

AI for local news: Five lessons from our first Lenfest AI Fellows gathering

As AI adoption accelerates across the media industry, how do we ensure small and mid-sized newsrooms — not just the largest players — can benefit from these developments and leverage AI meaningfully? At the program’s first convening, the fellows discussed solutions for building a more inclusive and effective AI ecosystem for local journalism.

Recruiting and onboarding AI talent

Lessons from the AI Collaborative to help local newsrooms hire the right candidate for AI roles, including job criteria, interview questions, onboarding checklists, and more.