Pulitzer Center launches program to train 1,000 journalists on AI reporting

The Pulitzer Center is pleased to announce the launch of the AI Spotlight Series, an ambitious global training initiative that seeks to elevate reporting of AI technologies across the media industry. 

The AI Spotlight Series is led by award-winning AI reporter Karen Hao, whose pioneering work in the field of AI accountability is regularly taught in universities and cited by governments. Some of the world’s leading technology reporters and editors have co-designed the AI Spotlight Series curriculum and will be instructors in the program. 

The Series is a two-year program of the Pulitzer Center’s AI Accountability Network, a global community of journalists who report on AI and with AI in the public interest. 

The Series is designed to equip reporters and editors—whether on the tech beat or any other beat—with the knowledge and skills to cover and shape coverage of AI and its profound influence on society. Some of the questions that will guide the instruction include: Where is AI being used? Where is it working or breaking? Who is being harmed, and who stands to profit? 

The program aims to train 1,000 reporters and editors through March 2026. It will prioritize journalists from the Global South and from communities underrepresented in media.

“I’m so thrilled to be working with the Pulitzer Center to deliver this series. We’re at a defining moment to shape the future of AI and the way AI will shape our future. More than ever, we need journalists across every beat to investigate the networks of money and power behind the AI industry, track the technology’s proliferation, and help the public and policymakers understand, participate in, and govern its development,” said Hao. 

“We are honored to partner with Karen and a stellar team of journalists to demystify the coverage of these technologies,” said Marina Walker Guevara, the Pulitzer Center’s executive editor. “We hope this program will help democratize the knowledge and skills needed to report about AI with nuance and hunt for inconvenient truths.” 

Most of the instruction will be interactive and online, with some in-person opportunities at journalism conferences around the world. The program is divided into three tracks: an introductory class for reporters on any desk; an in-depth course for reporters focused on covering AI or deepening their knowledge of AI reporting; and a module for editors (again on any desk) commissioning stories and thinking strategically about their team’s overall coverage. 

The AI Spotlight Series curriculum will eventually be open sourced so it will become a permanent resource for those entering the field of AI accountability. 

The Pulitzer Center is publishing today on its website a schedule of the online and in-person courses for the next few months, as well as detailed descriptions of each track so journalists can pick the one that best fit their needs. All courses are free of charge and some will include interpretation for other languages. Courses will be added to the schedule as they become available—check our website often. 

The co-designers and instructors of the AI Spotlight Series are: Lam Thuy Vo (reporter at The Markup), Gabriel Geiger (investigative reporter at Lighthouse Reports), Gideon Lichfield (former editor in chief at MIT Technology Review and WIRED), and Tom Simonite (senior editor at WIRED). 

Participants in the AI Spotlight Series will be invited to apply for reporting grants and fellowships administered by the AI Accountability Network and to join its growing community of journalists dedicated to reporting on AI with depth and nuance. 

We are grateful to the MacArthur Foundation and the Notre Dame-IBM Technology Ethics Lab for their support of the AI Spotlight Series, and to other donors that support our AI work more generally, including the Open Society Foundations. 

Please visit our website to learn more about the AI Spotlight Series, and send your questions to [email protected]. We welcome opportunities to partner with journalism organizations in the Global South and those that work with and support journalists underrepresented in media.