The Oglethorpe Echo receives $50,000 JournalismAI and Google News Initiative grant
The Oglethorpe Echo receives $50,000 JournalismAI and Google News Initiative grant
The Oglethorpe Echo, looking to innovate tangible pathways for AI integration and local journalism sustainability, has received a $50,000 JournalismAI grant. This grant, sponsored by the Google News Initiative, will enable The Echo to experiment, implement and share best practices of AI technologies.
The Oglethorpe Echo was founded in 1874 to serve Oglethorpe County. However, in 2021 the owners planned to close the newspaper, which would have created a rural news desert. Instead, University of Georgia alumnus Dink NeSmith (ABJ ’70) turned it into a nonprofit, and UGA journalism students became its newsroom staff. The Echo has been running as a news-academic partnership ever since.
As a recipient of the grant, The Oglethorpe Echo is one of 35 winners worldwide out of 712 grant applications. Recipients were selected based on novelty, feasibility and potential for impact.
“Being part of the JournalismAI Innovation Challenge is such a huge win for local news and for our journalism students at UGA,” shared Amanda Bright, Echo assistant editor and clinical associate professor of journalism at Grady College. “As one of only five U.S. newsrooms selected, we are so honored to help community newsrooms everywhere specifically develop AI in ways that support and help rural news deserts and news-academic partnerships thrive.”
Specifically, The Echo’s project, “Creating Sustainable AI Use in Local Newsrooms and News-Academic Partnerships,” is partnering with YESEO, a Slack app created by Ryan Restivo through the Reynolds Journalism Institute. Once implemented, reporters will be able to gain ethical workflow efficiencies.
“We will create, develop and test a set of newsroom tools that allow for AI to help local journalists be more efficient in areas like social media, email newsletter, style and editing and more — so that more of journalists’ time can be spent covering stories that matter and building relationships with their communities,” Bright said.
Journalism students that staff The Echo will also get the experience of testing and perfecting AI tools in real-time.
“Through this nine-month program, our Echo journalism seniors will be on the ground floor of AI-driven product development. We know our industry longs to harness AI’s efficiencies and abilities, but we want to do so in an ethical and responsible manner that ultimately allows us to better serve our communities with local news and information,” Bright said. “Our 22 students in The Echo class for spring 2025 will be able to see, test, refine and explore this work first-hand, which is an amazing opportunity.”
More details on this can be found:
- YESEO partners with The Oglethorpe Echo on JournalismAI Innovation Challenge
- JournalismAI, supported by GNI, awards 35 AI innovation grants
Author: Lauren A. Pike, lauren.pike@uga.edu