Report

Insights from the Lenfest AI Collaborative and Fellowship Program: 2026 Impact Report

A look at how publishers and engineers are building AI tools that strengthen local news businesses

October 21, 2026

At The Lenfest Institute for Journalism, we explore how technology can strengthen the business of local news and empower the public-service impact of journalists without undermining either. That has been core to our mission since the Institute’s founding, and it is the central goal of our work with artificial intelligence.

Today we’re sharing the Lenfest AI Collaborative and Fellowship Program’s 2026 Impact Report, which details lessons from the first two years of the program. The AI Collaborative embeds technical talent inside news organizations and gives them resources, platform credits, and broad latitude to explore how AI can strengthen local news businesses and their public benefit.

The first two years of the Collaborative and Fellowship Program were supported by OpenAI and Microsoft, which provided direct funding for each newsroom to hire an engineer, along with software credits and engineering support to enable experimentation. Each participating newsroom independently set its own priorities. Editorial decisions stay with the journalists, and the program is designed to protect the human judgment, editorial integrity, and trust at the heart of local journalism.

In September, The Lenfest Institute announced a renewed commitment from OpenAI that will allow more news organizations to enter the program, more experimentation, and more resource sharing to help the broader industry implement lessons from the Collaborative.

These efforts allow us to work across the full arc of how AI might be applied responsibly in local news. We give independent local news organizations room to experiment, champion promising ideas, help journalists and practitioners understand and harness the technology, and develop the infrastructure they rely on — all to support strong, diverse news enterprises that can meet consumers’ news and information needs over the long term.

Read the AI Impact Report Read the AI Impact Report

Lessons from the Collaborative

• A front-row view of generative AI at news organizations
• The Philadelphia Inquirer didn’t appoint AI champions. It made tools easy to find and use.
• AI in local news: A practical list of dos and don’ts

Meet the Fellows

• Rajesh Barade – The Seattle Times
• Aaron Brezel – ProPublica
• Dana Chiueh – ProPublica
• Mark Chonofsky – Chicago Public Media
• Kevin Delaney – The San Francisco Standard
• EJ Fox – Arizona State University NEWSWELL
• Kevin Hoffman – The Philadelphia Inquirer
• Peter Rasmussen – The Baltimore Banner
• Omar Reid – The Boston Globe
• Ryan Thayer – The Minnesota Star Tribune