Lenfest Institute and OpenAI expand AI journalism fellowship

Overview

The Lenfest Institute for Journalism and OpenAI have announced a significant expansion of their AI Collaborative and Fellowship Program, marking a new phase for the initiative described as the largest of its kind in American journalism. This next stage follows a successful two-year pilot that has already placed AI engineering fellows within major news organizations to drive innovation and operational efficiency.

To support this growth, OpenAI has doubled its previous commitment, pledging a new $5 million in funding alongside up to $5 million in software credits and engineering support. This substantial investment aims to help local news outlets integrate artificial intelligence responsibly while strengthening their business sustainability and community impact.

Since launching in 2024 with fellows embedded in 11 major news organizations, the program has demonstrated that dedicated AI technologists can help newsrooms accelerate innovation. The expansion will invite a new cohort of news organizations to join, allowing more enterprises to experiment with AI under high editorial standards and with human judgment at the forefront.

Program Expansion and Strategic Support

The Lenfest AI Collaborative and Fellowship Program is designed to place full-time AI technologists directly into operating news organizations. These fellows work alongside newsroom leaders, reporters, product teams, revenue staff, and executives to identify specific organizational challenges. Their goal is to build practical AI engineering solutions while establishing safe, transparent, and ethical policies for adoption.

The new phase builds on evidence that embedded fellows can drive culture change from the inside. By learning how journalists work and building solutions rooted in real needs, these technologists help organizations develop guardrails for AI integration. Notably, several fellows from the initial cohort are expected to stay on as full-time employees at their respective news organizations, underscoring the tangible value of their deployment.

“The most valuable lesson of the Lenfest AI Collaborative and Fellowship’s first two years is that responsible AI adoption is less about the technology and more about trust. The fellows have helped their news organizations build practical tools and drive culture change from the inside — through clear guardrails, policy standards, and open communication.” — Jim Friedlich, Executive Director and CEO, Lenfest Institute

Jim Friedlich emphasized that the upcoming phase offers an opportunity for more news enterprises to intentionally experiment with AI. The focus remains on preserving human judgment, editorial integrity, expertise, and trust, which are considered central to local journalism. The expanded program aims to ensure that technological adoption supports rather than supplants the core mission of news organizations.

Tom Rubin, OpenAI’s Chief of Intellectual Property and Content, highlighted the broader impact of the partnership. He noted the importance of local news in building human connections that make communities feel like neighborhoods. The expanded support allows OpenAI to help even more journalists leverage AI as a tool for delivering quality local news.

Practical Applications and Newsroom Impact

During the pilot phase, participating organizations developed a wide range of practical applications that demonstrate AI’s utility across the news enterprise. At The Philadelphia Inquirer, fellows supported the creation of Dewey, a tool that helps journalists search decades of archived reporting. They also developed Scrape, a monitoring tool that transformed a labor-intensive 15-hour-per-week task into a daily digest of potential story leads from the newspaper’s region.

At Chicago Public Media, AI-assisted translation workflows enabled the publication of time-sensitive Spanish-language coverage in a fraction of the time previously required. Additionally, the organization used AI to transcribe audio archives reflecting Chicago news and culture that had been stored for decades. These projects illustrate how AI can address both immediate reporting needs and long-term archival preservation.

Across the 11 initial organizations, fellow-led projects covered diverse functions including:

• Audience engagement and personalization
• Investigative news research
• Advertising prospecting and reader revenue operations
• Subscription growth strategies
• Public-meeting monitoring
• Transition from print to digital production
• General operational efficiency improvements

Collectively, these initiatives show that AI’s potential extends beyond merely improving journalist productivity. It can strengthen nearly every function of a modern news organization while empowering journalists to maintain their central role in producing trusted, independent reporting.

Knowledge Sharing and Community Building

A key component of the program’s success has been the exchange of ideas between participating newsrooms. Fellows actively shared code, adapted one another’s strategies, and compared implementation approaches. This collaborative environment allowed tools and methods originating in one newsroom to serve as starting points for solving related problems at peer organizations.

This cross-pollination of innovation demonstrates how the fellowship model extends its impact well beyond any single institution. By fostering a community of practice, the program ensures that lessons learned and technologies developed are accessible to a broader segment of the journalism industry.

The pilot revealed that successful AI adoption depends as much on trust, collaboration, and a clear understanding of organizational needs as it does on the underlying technology. Fellows were hired locally and became integral parts of the organizations they served, ensuring that solutions were tailored to specific contexts rather than applied as generic fixes.

As the program enters its next phase, the emphasis remains on responsible experimentation. The expanded funding and support from OpenAI will enable more news organizations to access the expertise needed to navigate the complexities of AI integration. This continued growth promises to further solidify the role of AI as a supportive tool in the maintenance of vibrant, sustainable local journalism.