OpenAI is launching a major, multi-faceted initiative to support the journalism ecosystem with tools, training, partnerships, shared learning, and practical enablement for students, educators, journalists, and news organizations.
It begins with the next generation of reporters at CUNY’S Newmark J-School and Northwestern University’s Medill School.
For the new 2026–2027 academic year, OpenAI is collaborating closely with the Tow-Knight Center for Journalism Futures at the Newmark J-School and the Medill’s Knight Lab, two of the leaders in journalism and technology in the country, and providing more than 400 ChatGPT Edu1 subscriptions to interested graduate students and faculty at those schools.
Journalism students entering classrooms this year are preparing to enter one of the most dynamic and difficult moments in the history of the news industry. AI is helping reporters, editors, and business teams analyze public records faster, translate stories for broader audiences, uncover patterns in large datasets, search archives, improve reader experiences, assist in marketing, build new products, and spend more time on the work that matters most: reporting, verification, storytelling, strengthening business, and serving communities.
For journalism schools, this creates an important opportunity. Students should graduate not only understanding how AI is changing the profession, but also knowing how to use it thoughtfully, creatively, ethically and responsibly to make their journalism, as well as the business of journalism, stronger. Through these collaborations, OpenAI and the Newmark and Medill communities will seek to further this outcome.
“Generative AI is a transformative technology that will remake the information landscape, and one that the journalism industry will need to adapt to and shape in order to fulfill our mission of informing the public. We intend for the Newmark community to be at the forefront of this transformation, and it’s critical that they learn about and be immersed in this technology. We’re very grateful to OpenAI for making the tools available to our students and faculty so they can better prepare themselves for this future.”
—Gina Chua, Executive Director of the Tow-Knight Center.
“The media industry is rapidly evolving, and AI is a major driver of this change. The Knight Lab is committed to ensuring that any Medill graduate students who want to use the latest AI tools and techniques can do so without cost being a barrier. Offering equity of access is crucial when incorporating new technologies. The Knight Lab has been working at the intersection of media and AI for more than a decade. This support from OpenAI helps us to continue to explore the future of media and technology, allowing faculty to teach and practice journalism in countless new ways.”
—Jeremy Gilbert, Medill Professor and Knight Chair in Digital Media Strategy.
“Over the past three years, OpenAI has partnered closely with leaders across the news industry to help both established and aspiring journalists make the most of AI, while keeping their human expertise front and center. We’re excited to see what the next generation of reporters and editors will accomplish with AI as they carry forward journalism’s proud tradition of serving communities through their vital work. OpenAI is expanding on our longstanding commitment to journalism and furthering our mission by providing students and faculty at the Newmark J-School at CUNY and Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern access to the technology, sharing successes and challenges, and engaging in deep dialogues about strengthening journalism’s future.”
—Tom Rubin, Chief of Intellectual Property and Content at OpenAI
The Tow-Knight Center at the Newmark J-School and the Knight Labs at Medill are the first partners in this latest phase of OpenAI’s commitment to journalism, and additional efforts are already underway to expand support across the journalism education ecosystem.
AI can help journalism students work more ambitiously. It can support deeper investigations, faster analysis, stronger brainstorming, new storytelling formats, and more pointed questioning.
But access to the technology alone is not enough. Students need opportunities to experiment, develop responsible workflows, understand its limitations, and learn where human judgment matters most.
Through this program, the Tow-Knight Center and the Knight Lab will help students at the Newmark J-School and Medill explore how AI can support their work while preserving the essential roles of reporters, editors, producers, and newsroom leaders.
This new initiative builds on OpenAI’s yearslong and ongoing support of the journalism ecosystem, which includes:
- Through our renewed partnership with the American Journalism Project, all 50+ of the news organizations in their portfolio will have the opportunity to access ChatGPT enterprise and API credits. AJP’s Product & AI Studio will turn the strongest uses cases into reusable tools and infrastructure, and share playbooks and lessons across the portfolio and with the broader nonprofit and local news community.
- OpenAI’s continued support for the Lenfest Institute for Journalism’s AI Collaborative and Fellowship program, providing major local news organizations with funds to hire AI engineering fellows dedicated to building, scaling, and sharing projects that strengthen journalism and the business of news. Projects have focused on reporting on public data, making news archives more accessible to staff, developing new products that expand audience reach, and growing advertising, subscription, and membership revenue.
- An ongoing partnership with WAN-IFRA, launched in 2024, through which OpenAI has supported multiple stages of its Newsroom AI Catalyst accelerator program, which has served over 165 newsrooms across Europe, Asia Pacific, South Asia, Latin America, and Australia and New Zealand. The program offers practical training, technical assistance, strategy development, and OpenAI API credits.
- OpenAI’s ongoing work with INMA to support international news organizations to understand and shape the role AI can play across journalism and the business of news. The partnership has supported dedicated regional discussions with industry leaders from Europe, Latin America, and Asia Pacific, alongside webinars, and OpenAI API credits for hands-on building.
The new Tow-Knight Center and Knight Lab program at the Newmark J-School and Medill program builds on these efforts and expands this work further upstream: helping future journalists build the skills, fluency, and confidence they will need before they enter the newsroom
Enabling Newmark J-School and Medill students and faculty is the latest step as OpenAI extends its broad, multi-faceted collaborations with news industry leaders. Additional phases are actively being developed to expand tools, training, partnerships, shared learning, and practical enablement across the journalism industry. This work builds on OpenAI’s early support of journalism and education. In 2023, OpenAI provided a grant to help launch the Ethics and Journalism Initiative at NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute that studies, among other things, AI and journalism.
It continues the dialogues and collaborations across the industry. Just this year, for instance, OpenAI has hosted meetings with journalists and given trainings at the National Association of Black Journalists conference, National Association of Hispanic Journalists conference, Asian American Journalists Association conference, and NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists conference. These convenings brought together reporters, editors, producers, students, educators, newsroom leaders, and media entrepreneurs from communities that have long shaped how journalism serves different audiences.
At these conferences, OpenAI has listened to journalists’ needs, shared hands-on examples, and helped reporters explore practical ways to use AI in their daily work. That engagement has also informed the continued expansion of OpenAI Academy for News Organizations(opens in a new window), a learning hub with practical training, newsroom-relevant use cases, playbooks, and real-world examples for journalists and publishers using AI.
Together, these educational collaborations, professional partnerships, and industry conferences are helping shape the next phases of OpenAI’s journalism work—ensuring the deployment and use of AI is grounded in the real needs and experiences of the people building the future of news.
