Artificial intelligence and newsroom collaboration. Put the two together, and you have a recipe to reimagine journalism’s potential. That’s what we learned in last year’s JournalismAI Collab, our first attempt – powered by the Google News Initiative – at convening news organisations to co-create AI-powered experiments. This year, we are at it again, and we believe the opportunities for innovation are even greater. 

🎆 We are excited to announce that 19 news organisations from 15 different countries – 7 in the Americas and 12 in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) – will join the 2021 JournalismAI Collab Challenges. 🎆

We received an overwhelming response from our network with quality applications from 30+ countries. We learned a lot from all the applicants and we want to thank everyone who took the time to apply.

The final line-up of participants includes news organisations of all types and sizes, from Norway to Peru, Mexico, Germany, and Tunisia. They bring some of the brightest journalism innovators in news organisations around the world to work together.

Meet the 2021 Collab participants

Here are the participants of the Collab Challenge in the Americas 🌎. They will work with the Knight Lab team at Northwestern University exploring how we might use AI technologies to innovate newsgathering and investigative reporting techniques:

     🇧🇷  AzMina (Brazil)

     🇺🇸  Bloomberg News (US)

     🇨🇷  CLIP (Costa Rica)

     🇲🇽  Data Crítica (Mexico)

     🇦🇷  La Nación (Argentina)

     🇺🇸  MuckRock (US)

     🇵🇪  Ojo Público (Peru)

And this is the list of participants of the Collab Challenge in EMEA 🌍. They will work with BBC News Labs and Clwstwr exploring how we might use modular journalism and AI to assemble new storytelling formats:

     🇫🇷  AFP (France)

     🇩🇪  Bayerischer Rundfunk (Germany)

     🇩🇪  Deutsche Welle (Germany)

     🇮🇹  Il Sole 24 Ore (Italy)

     🇹🇳  Inkyfada (Tunisia)

     🇱🇧  Maharat Foundation (Lebanon)

     🇳🇴  Media City Bergen (Norway)

     🇬🇧  RADAR (UK)

     🇩🇪  Science Media Center (Germany)

     🇸🇪  SverIges Radio (Sweden)

     🇬🇧  The Guardian (UK)

     🇨🇭  TX Group (Switzerland)

Here’s what some of the participants have to say about the Collab Challenges:

❝  We are excited to take part in the JournalismAI Collab Challenges as we believe in collaboration, technology, talent, and transparency as powerful drivers of change, innovation, and impact in a challenging data-driven world.❞
La Nación (Argentina)

❝ Media organisations in Latin America are experimenting with the adoption of AI in many different areas, from editorial content creation to marketing techniques. The ground has never been this fertile before. CLIP is excited to be part of a project that will help understand the potential of AI in the region, hand in hand with a group of excellent professionals and colleagues.❞
Centro Latinoamericano de Investigación Periodística (CLIP)

❝ We are excited to see how we can use AI to boost journalism in order to serve a broader audience. Cooperation between journalists and tech people is crucial for innovation in media and we look forward to working with smart colleagues from all over Europe and the Middle East.❞
Sveriges Radio (Sweden)

❝We see this as an extraordinary opportunity to work together and accelerate the journey towards new initiatives and new products, as well as to raise awareness on the editorial and ethical implications of this technology.❞
Il Sole 24 Ore (Italy)

The journey ahead

The programme will kick off in a couple of weeks. In the coming months, participants will organise in teams to define the challenges they’ll work on, imagine potential solutions, and turn them into prototypes with the support of our regional partners. 

Shirish Kulkarni, who will support the EMEA participants on behalf of Clwstwr, says:

❝ We are delighted to be working with a brilliant range of organisations, who bring unique insights and experience but all share a deep belief in the value of collaboration. We’re looking forward to learning together how we might use AI and modular journalism to build new storytelling formats that engage, inform, and entertain. For me, the future of the industry lies in using cutting-edge technology, new narrative approaches, and collective wisdom to build more effective and more inclusive journalism. The JournalismAI project combines all those things, and I’m really looking forward to getting started on working out exactly what that future might look like.❞

Jeremy Gilbert, who leads the team that will support the Americas’ participants on behalf of the Knight Lab at Northwestern University, says:

❝ We are excited to guide this terrific collection of news organizations. We know that together we can explore critical tools and methods to help investigative journalists. Along the way, we aim to build new bonds between newsrooms throughout the Americas and to use the project as a way to showcase how professional newsrooms and academic institutions can work together.❞

The teams will work together for six months and will present their work at the second edition of the JournalismAI Festival that we will host in November 2021 (dates to be announced). 

And the Collab line-up is not complete yet! There are two days left to apply for the Collab Challenge in Asia-Pacific (APAC) 🌏 that we are hosting in partnership with Bennett University’s Times School of Media and Computer Science Engineering Department. Find out more about the opportunity to join the APAC cohort in this One-Pager and apply by April 30th.

Sign up for our newsletter to receive all the updates about the work of the Collab teams in the coming months, including opportunities to contribute to their projects.

Follow us on Twitter and join us on Telegram to engage with other AI-journalism enthusiasts from across the world.

JournalismAI is a project of POLIS – the journalism think-tank at the London School of Economics and Political Science – and it’s powered by the Google News Initiative.