The London School of Economics and Political Science, through JournalismAI, have announced a new grant programme with the Google News Initiative to enable 35 news organisations around the world to experiment, implement and share best practice across AI technologies.
The JournalismAI Innovation Challenge, supported by the Google News Initiative, will be a nine-month programme to fund projects from a wide range of small and medium-sized publishers. The grants will be targeted in three areas to support AI tools and technologies: experimentation of new formats across mobile, video and audio; identification of ways to grow subscriptions and support diverse forms of revenue; and to fight misinformation.
Selected news organisations will be awarded grants ranging between $50,000 and $250,000 to complete this work. Grant recipients will be selected based on the impact and potential of their proposed projects by an independent selection committee composed of industry leaders as well as the JournalismAI team.
The programme is designed by JournalismAI, an initiative of Polis, the journalism think-tank in the Media and Communications Department at LSE and is supported by the Google News Initiative. Since 2018, JournalismAI has been empowering news organisations around the world, to responsibly use AI, through training, research, and capacity building.
Commenting on the new programme, Director of Polis, Professor Charlie Beckett said: “This is a critical phase for the integration of AI technologies in journalism. This programme will allow us to back some flagship schemes that will help other news organisations to follow in the footsteps of those who are selected. The news media around the world has never been more important and we need to make the best and most responsible use of AI to support the best and most vital journalism”.
Announcing the new programme, Matt Cooke, Head of Ecosystem Investment Programs, AI & Misinformation, Google News Initiative said: “We’ve worked with JournalismAI for six years to help develop industry research and share best practices with news organisations. We’re excited to build on that partnership by supporting this new programme to bolster small and medium sized news publishers’ AI innovation efforts. We look forward to learning more about the selected projects, which we hope will inspire journalists and publishers around the world."
The application process opens on 5 September 2024, and closes on 10 October 2024. Application outcomes will be announced at the end of November 2024.