OpenAI commits another $10M to Lenfest AI newsroom fellowships — TV stations and statewide outlets now eligible
OpenAI pledged $5M in new funding plus up to $5M in software credits to the Lenfest Institute's AI newsroom fellowship on Sep 28; the next cohort opens to local TV stations and statewide public-service outlets for the first time.
What happened
OpenAI pledged a further $10 million to the Lenfest Institute for Journalism's AI Collaborative and Fellowship Program on September 28, 2026: $5 million in new direct funding plus up to $5 million in software credits (and engineering support). The commitment doubles OpenAI's previous support for the program.
The fellowship began in 2024 as a joint up-to-$10-million effort with Microsoft — each company provided $2.5 million in direct funding and $2.5 million in technology credits. OpenAI is making the new commitment on its own; Microsoft has not announced a comparable renewal.
The program places full-time AI fellows inside newsrooms for two-year stints — so far at 11 news organizations, including The Baltimore Banner and The Philadelphia Inquirer. At the Inquirer, one fellow built "Dewey," a tool for searching decades of archived reporting, and another built a daily digest that replaced a roughly 15-hour-a-week lead-hunting task.
The next cohort, opening in 2026, expands eligibility for the first time beyond metro dailies to local television operations and statewide public-service news outlets.
Why it matters
OpenAI keeps funding local journalism's AI capacity even as its relationship with publishers grows more adversarial — The Seattle Times and Newsday sued OpenAI and Microsoft over scraping claims in early September. Meanwhile the Lenfest program turns fellowship projects into open-source tools and plugins for hundreds of newsrooms that will never host a fellow, making the knowledge-sharing obligation the program's most durable mechanism.