Thank for your interest to the AI Spotlight Series. Welcome to the Track 3: An Editor's Guide to AI application page.
Please submit your application for the AI Spotlight Series Track 3 session, a 90-minute interactive training session led by Gideon Lichfield and Bina Venkataraman.
This track is designed for managing editors, executive editors, desk editors, social media editors -- anyone in charge of directing coverage, commissioning stories, or packaging and producing them for public consumption.
We will identify different types of AI stories and dissect what sets apart the best coverage, including its framing, headline, and artwork. You’ll learn to assess pitches and filed stories and avoid common pitfalls that can mislead or confuse an audience (or an editor). There will be opportunities to ask questions, trade tips, and have a lively discussion among fellow newsroom decision-makers.
To allow maximum interaction between the coaches and the editors, we will cap the maximum number of trainees to 35-40 journalists. During the application review, we consider, among others, the applicants' time zone, their role in the newsroom, and their motivation or reason for joining the training. Kindly note that this session is about reporting on AI, and not about using AI for journalistic purposes. Apply by July 31, 2025.
The Pulitzer Center is now accepting applications for its fourth cohort (2025-2026) of Artificial Intelligence (AI) Accountability Fellowships.
AI and other predictive technologies have been used to make policy decisions, understand disease, teach our children, and monitor our work for years. The hype around generative AI is now supercharging the spread of these systems while citizens have little insight into how they work, who profits from them, and who gets hurt.
Through the AI Accountability Fellowships, the Pulitzer Center aims to support in-depth, high-impact reporting projects that document and explain the opportunities, harms, and regulatory and labor issues surrounding AI systems. The Fellowship program provides selected journalists with financial support, a community of peers, mentorship, and training to pursue in-depth reporting projects that interrogate how AI systems are funded, built, and deployed by corporations, governments, and other powerful actors.
Launched in 2022, the AI Accountability Fellowships have so far supported 27 journalists from five continents. Previous Fellows reported on a range of in-depth stories that gives us a nuanced look at each stage of the AI supply chain and its real-life consequences. Their reporting has triggered policy reforms, sparked official inquiries, and inspired college journalists to start their own investigations and student poets to examine AI accountability.
The Pulitzer Center is recruiting eight to 10 journalists from anywhere in the world to report on the impacts of algorithmic and automated systems on their communities. We encourage journalists from the Global South and from communities that are underrepresented in the media to apply.
While we welcome projects on a broad range of issues, we are seeking to support at least two projects on transparency and governance in relation to AI. This includes projects that follow the money across borders; shed light on opaque and harmful AI supply chains; or report on legislation, business practices, and organizations that exacerbate the lack of accountability and transparency of AI systems.
The 10-months-long Fellowship starts in September 2025. Journalists selected as AI Accountability Fellows will be provided up to $20,000 to pursue their reporting projects. Funds can be used to pay for records requests, travel expenses, data analysis, and stipends, among other costs. In addition, the Fellows will have access to mentors from different fields and relevant training with a group of peers that will help strengthen their reporting projects.
Successful applicants will be expected to join a mandatory 1.5-2-hour meeting held every month, contribute to at least one community call during the Fellowship, and engage with other Fellows in virtual meetings and on the community’s dedicated online platform. They are also encouraged to attend a monthly virtual training session. Such collaborations and participation in training sessions and meetings are requirements of the Fellowship program. Working and learning with a diverse group of journalists from around the world can illuminate unforeseen connections among stories and strengthen everyone’s projects with new perspectives.
Journalists need to apply with a reporting project they wish to pursue during their Fellowship. We encourage enterprise and accountability projects that use a variety of approaches—from data analysis, to records requests, and shoe-leather reporting—and delve into the real-world impact of algorithms on policy, individuals, and communities.
The deadline for submissions is August 11, 2025, 11:59pm EDT. Please use this form to submit your application. We encourage you to include findings from your pre-reporting and submit your application early.