The Lenfest Institute

The Lenfest Institute offers financial support through grants, conducts training sessions, and compiles effective strategies to create and share lasting solutions for the business issues that local news organizations encounter.

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The Philadelphia Inquirer has been publishing for more than 190 years. Here’s how it built an AI-driven research tool to unlock its archives.

1 week ago | lenfestinstitute.org | David Chivers

The Philadelphia Inquirer collaborated with Microsoft in a two-week hackathon, developing an AI-driven “Research Assistant.” The tool enhances newsroom research efforts significantly, empowering reporters and editors, reducing research time, improving accuracy, and helping unlock the value of the newspaper’s massive historical archive.
Urgent calls to action from the Lenfest-Aspen Local News Summit

2 months ago | lenfestinstitute.org | Jim Friedlich |Vivian Schiller

Dean Baquet: Local journalism is the foundation for the future Reporting itself — the act of going out with an open mind, not knowing what you will find — is under threat.
Kevin Merida: We don't know our country well enough

2 months ago | lenfestinstitute.org | Kevin Merida

This essay is part of a series on the 2025 Lenfest Institute-Aspen Digital Local News Summit, an annual convening of the country’s leading journalists, publishers, funders, news creators, and other industry professionals. It was originally published in Columbia Journalism Review. One of the biggest un-talked-about challenges of our profession is that we don’t know our country well enough. And by that, I mean our fellow human beings. Our understanding of each other is not sophisticated enough.
Joel Simon: We are playing defense

2 months ago | lenfestinstitute.org | Joel Simon

This essay is part of a series on the 2025 Lenfest Institute-Aspen Digital Local News Summit, an annual convening of the country’s leading journalists, publishers, funders, news creators, and other industry professionals. It was originally published in Columbia Journalism Review. Journalists are not going to save democracy. We are not going to save Trump voters from themselves.
Richard J. Tofel: At the Local News Summit, talk of ‘reinventing local journalism’

2 months ago | lenfestinstitute.org | Richard J. Tofel

This essay is part of a series on the 2025 Lenfest Institute-Aspen Digital Local News Summit, an annual convening of the country’s leading journalists, publishers, funders, news creators, and other industry professionals. It was originally published in Columbia Journalism Review. Journalism has found itself in the crosshairs amid the dizzying swirl of news coming out of Washington.
Navigating the AI landscape: How news organizations are creating trust-based AI policies

2 months ago | lenfestinstitute.org | David Chivers

We launched the Lenfest Institute AI Collaborative and Fellowship Programto help news organizations explore how artificial intelligence could unlock new possibilities for journalism and drive business sustainability. From enhancing local government coverage and mining decades of archives to transforming advertising training and go-to-market processes, the participating news organizations have ambitious plans to push the boundaries and experiment with new solutions.
AI tools powering innovation in Technical.ly’s newsroom

Nov 26, 2024 | lenfestinstitute.org | Hayley Slusser

Artificial intelligence is here to stay. Though the emerging technology may seem new, it is already becoming a permanent part of the way many news organizations work. While it is normal to be skeptical of new technology — we’re journalists, after all — Technical.ly Editorial Director Danya Henninger highlighted several ways newsrooms can leverage AI to improve their reporting, streamline simple tasks, or expand the reach of their journalism.
Creating space for others to lead, contribute, and innovate

Nov 19, 2024 | lenfestinstitute.org | Monique Curry-Mims

Newsletter Reflections from the Constellation News Leadership Initiative The Constellation News Leadership Initiative launched in 2020 as a professional development fellowship supporting mid-career media professionals of color in Philadelphia.
Endorsing a different kind of newspaper ownership

Oct 30, 2024 | lenfestinstitute.org | Jim Friedlich

Last week, the owners of The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times overruled their editorial leadership and each decided not to endorse a candidate in the 2024 presidential election. On Friday, The Philadelphia Inquirer published its presidential endorsement, which featured in-depth reporting and deeply researched rationale for its opinion.
Salt Lake Tribune digital-first editorial tools to grow audience

Aug 29, 2024 | lenfestinstitute.org | Adam Schweigert

This case study is part of the Beyond Print Toolkit, a guide created by The Lenfest Institute for Journalism and the American Press Institute to help guide publishers away from print-centric revenue models toward a sustainable digital future. After becoming an independent nonprofit and dissolving a joint operating agreement with cross-town paper Deseret News in 2020, The Salt Lake Tribune had an editorial process that was still heavily focused on print.