Pulitzer Center Update October 29, 2024
Pulitzer Center Announces the 2024-2025 Cohort of AI Accountability Fellows
The Artificial Intelligence Accountability Network, the Pulitzer Center's initiative that supports and brings together journalists reporting on AI and with AI, has selected its third cohort of AI Accountability Fellows.
Nine journalists based in five continents have been chosen to spend the next 10 months investigating the impact of AI technologies on their communities.
The Fellows will track AI supply chains, investigate the environmental cost of AI infrastructure, and report on workplace surveillance and bias of algorithmic systems used by governments, among other topics. They will combine cross-border collaborations, data reporting, creative visual approaches, and traditional shoe-leather reporting.
“Amid the current AI hype, rigorous accountability reporting on the money and power behind AI technologies has never been more urgent and needed,” said Marina Walker Guevara, the Pulitzer Center’s executive editor. “These journalists are pursuing stories of high public interest for their communities and the world.”
The 2024-2025 AI Accountability Fellows are (in alphabetical order):
- Pablo Jiménez Arandia is a freelance journalist based in Barcelona, Spain, reporting for El País and other outlets
- Marché Arends and Kathryn Cleary are staff and freelance journalists respectively based in Cape Town, South Africa, reporting together for The Continent
- Francesca D'Annunzio is a staff journalist with the Texas Observer, based in Austin, Texas
- Clément Pouré is a freelance journalist based in Paris, France, reporting for Mediapart, Le Pavé Numérique, and La Vie Ouvrière
- Nico Schmidt is a staff journalist with Investigate Europe, based in Berlin, Germany
- Sofia Schurig is a staff journalist with Núcleo, based in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil
- Sushmita is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai, India, reporting for The Wire and IndiaSpend
- Fabiola Torres is a staff journalist with Salud con Lupa, based in Lima, Perú
Through the AI Accountability Network, the Pulitzer Center addresses the knowledge imbalance on artificial intelligence that exists in the journalism industry, especially at the local level, and builds the capacity of journalists to report on this fast-evolving and underreported topic with skill, nuance, and impact.
In its first two years, the Fellowship supported 18 journalists reporting from 11 countries. Their reporting sparked legislative inquiries, halted the deployment of government algorithms, and prompted unions, college students, and other journalists to replicate the Fellows’ methodologies.
The Fellowship provides financial, data, and research support to the selected journalists, who also receive training and meet regularly as a cohort. The Fellows also participate in multidisciplinary outreach programs designed by the Pulitzer Center Engagement and Education teams to amplify the reach and impact of their stories.
The AI Accountability Network is funded with the support of the Open Society Foundations (OSF), Luminate, Notre Dame-IBM Technology Ethics Lab, and other donors that support our work more generally.
If you are a journalist or editor interested in joining this network, please visit our AI Accountability Network page for more information or email [email protected]. If you would like to join one of our one-off training sessions on AI reporting, please visit the AI Spotlight Series page.
