AI + Local News Hackathon

Thursday, Jan. 30: Idea development workshop

The Minnesota Journalism Center is hosting a kickoff event to get the ideas flowing. It's happening in conjunction with the Minnesota Newspaper Association's annual convention, but journalists from any type of news organization are invited and encouraged to attend. 

• Where: Minneapolis Marriott Northwest -- Brooklyn Park, Minn.
• When: 1:30 - 5 p.m. (with an optional reception from 5:30-6:30 p.m.)
• Who should join: Minnesota journalists curious about the potential role for AI tools in their newsrooms
• How to RSVP: Stay tuned. We'll be posting RSVP information by early January. Sign up for our newsletter to be the first to know when they're available.

We'll begin by hearing from some local news organizations about how they're using AI -- and if they're not yet using it, how they're beginning to think about it. Then we'll shift into a discussion about ethics, trust and responsibilities to our communities.

And we'll bring participants together in teams to develop ideas around applications of AI use in their news organizations. Some of those ideas could form the basis of projects developed during the following two-day hackathon on the University of Minnesota's campus Friday and Saturday.

Friday, Jan. 31 + Saturday, Feb. 1: Hackathon

In this separate (but related!) event, we'll gather journalists, developers, community members and students to work in teams and move some of those big ideas closer to reality.

• Where: Murphy Hall, home of the Hubbard School for Journalism and Mass Communications, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities campus (East Bank) 
• When: All day Friday and Saturday
• Who should join: Minnesota journalists who want to bring their newsroom expertise to creating new tools. (If you've got an idea or a problem you'd like to solve with AI and programming, all the better -- but even if not, we need all the newsroom experience we can get!) 
• Cost: Free. 
• How to RSVP: Stay tuned. We'll be posting RSVP information by early January.

In this part of our journalist and developer collaboration, we'll ask participants to join us for both days. We'll form teams of professionals and students -- journalists, community members and programmers -- to develop and prototype solutions to Minnesota newsrooms' most gnawing challenges.

Some of the projects will likely come from the seeds of ideas raised in Thursday's workshop at the Minnesota Newspapers Association convention, and others will surface during Friday's hackathon idea session.

Journalists are encouraged to think about the issues that keep them up at night; the workflow challenges that make basic newsroom functions onerous; the data and access that seem just out of reach enough to be too big to tackle -- and the Big Dream projects that they just don't feel as though they have the time or capacity to launch. Think: Coverage, workflow, accountability, process, story presentation, metrics, community building and beyond.