We are building a partnership to support local small to midsize newsrooms algorithmically audit their content to check alignment against their mission statements and editorial goals.
Some angles (geography) are easily solved via well-validated existing technologies, others (quotes by gender) require more thoughtful, and experimental approaches using emergent technologies.
Our current work involves building prototypes that use both approaches, focused on evaluating how some of the more challenging tasks, such as counting quotes by gender of speaker, could be solved using new generative AI technologies.
We are seeking funding to launch a collaborative design project with a small number of newsrooms that are interested in helping build out a toolkit that lets them automate this kind of content analysis of their stories to help them gauge their coverage against their mission and also inform their future editorial decision-making.
This work is being piloted hand-in-hand with The Scope, Northeastern’s Boston-focus social justice publication, and an emerging network of partners working on similar projects.
