A new collaboration with new partners

We are working with a pair of very exciting newsrooms on scaling our recommendation system for deeper reader engagement

We have been busy at work throughout the summer, running and evaluating our experiment and hiring some new team members. Now, with support from a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, we are kicking off a new project that we’re very excited about: we are thrilled to announce the start of our inaugural newsroom cohort, partners with whom we will be collaborating on the scaling of our data-informed recommendation system. This small but mighty cohort consists of The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Texas Tribune.

We will be working closely with the product teams at both of these illustrious news organizations in order to:

• iterate on and customize our successful recommendation system and deploy it on our partners’ sites;
• help explore their data analytics and provide insights that could help improve their reader engagement strategy; and
• share learning and expertise and identify how we can continue to create community around the intersection of editorial, revenue and technology.

Ultimately, our goal with this project is increasing revenue-generating reader engagement and supporting local newsrooms’ financial sustainability.

We went through a very intentional process to acquire these partners, promoting a call for applications through social media and our network of local newsrooms. Among our top considerations were the communities served, geographic location, and technical capabilities. After receiving about two dozen applications, all from very worthy organizations doing important work, we shortlisted four and are ecstatic to have selected the Inquirer and the Tribune. The geographic diversity of these two newsrooms along with the range of communities they serve fit well with the values of our team. Their websites are published using custom platforms which will necessitate us collaborating closely with their in-house engineers.

Our first task is collecting our partners’ data so we can start adapting and training our machine learning models to fit their needs. We will soon begin to meet with them regularly to discuss ways we can improve our current recommendation systems and align it with their business goals.

As we get deeper into the project, we will share more; it is part of our mission to help the wider local news community and elevate knowledge and expertise. We will be collaborating with our fellow grantees within the Knight initiative: The AP, NYC Media Lab and Partnership on AI, which is a new and exciting way of working for us. We will also be engaging with a second cohort project in Spring of 2022, so stay tuned (here on Medium or follow us on Twitter) for more information on that in the months ahead. For now though, welcome to our partners, The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Texas Tribune — we are delighted to have you aboard!