Philadelphia Inquirer makes AI lead-finding critical infrastructure for local newsletters
An editor-trained monitoring system now feeds six local newsletters and is being expanded across the newsroom.
The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Scrape runs AI over editor-curated municipal, school and social sources to produce hyperlocal tip sheets, after one editor had spent about 12 hours a week finding newsletter items. Following three to four months of annotated feedback, the tool is now “load-bearing and critical infrastructure” for six newsletters, soon eight, with nearly 20 journalists following its output. The rollout shows how a publisher can turn editorial judgement into discovery infrastructure that expands local coverage capacity without asking an already stretched desk to absorb more monitoring work.