Microsoft Democracy Forward program manager on saving local news, media viability

Microsoft has launched a new software tool to help news outlets worldwide become more sustainable.

Called the Media Viability Accelerator, the free platform also marks a new direction for Microsoft's work to support journalism, as part of its broader initiative to protect democracy.

It also comes as the Redmond company defends itself against allegations that some of its AI work is harming the news industry.

The democracy initiative ranges from security work to identify cyberattacks on elections and interference by authoritarian nations to software and services supporting media organizations and journalists.

(Microsoft has also supported The Seattle Times, as have other major employers in the region, but they have no say over coverage.)

The Media Viability Accelerator was developed in partnership with the U.S. Agency for International Development and Internews, a nonprofit supporting independent media globally.

The platform officially launched Thursday alongside the U.N. General Assembly in New York.

It can be used by media outlets to analyze and track their online performance, and learn from data shared across the platform. It's also designed to be a marketplace for companies offering media viability products and services.

"It's an opportunity for shared learnings and information, where the community can come together and learn from one another and grow," Ginny Badanes, general manager of Microsoft's Democracy Forward initiative, said in a phone interview.

Badanes said the goal is to have "upward of 2,000 newsrooms" using the platform and sharing insights.

More than 260 outlets signed up during a pilot period. Most were overseas and enticed by grants of up to $25,000 funded by USAID. It's part of the agency's work to strengthen democracy by supporting independent media.

The accelerator is primarily intended for media outside the U.S. in "countries where media really struggles to exist, so more in lower income, middle income countries," said Jeanne Bourgault, a USAID veteran and Seattle native who is now president and CEO of Internews.

"We really have an emphasis on local news too, because that's the type of thing that really reaches people," Bourgault said. "And that's sort of our whole point of doing all this work, is that we really believe that everyone, everywhere deserves the information they need to make good choices for their families and hold power to account."

Microsoft's journalism initiative began in 2020. It funded five pilot programs, including one in Yakima, to experiment with different models for supporting local news.

As those pilot projects wound down, the company in 2023 refocused and began developing the accelerator platform.

"I'd say it's an adjusting strategy, not pulling back," Badanes said. "In fact, we're investing more than we ever have. But you're correct in that where we're putting those investments looks different than they did five years ago."

Badanes said her team hired a full-time journalism director, Associated Press veteran Noreen Gillespie, and is now working "on a strategy for greater scale and impact."

While Microsoft learned from the local pilots and believes they were good investments, "we recognized that they were always going to stay rather small and isolated ... we looked at where we could have more impact globally, and where we could do more with the money and resources we were putting into it," Badanes said.

That led to partnerships with organizations, including USAID and the Online News Association, to help train journalists on cybersecurity.

I appreciate the decision but hope Microsoft keeps helping solve the puzzle of how to save local news, especially in rural and suburban America.

I also don't envy Badanes having to thread the needle as the journalism industry faces new threats from technology championed by Microsoft.

Microsoft's journalism program evolved as the company emerged as a leader in artificial-intelligence technology that could eviscerate the news industry's emerging, online business model.

While news outlets may benefit internally from AI productivity tools, their survival ultimately depends on growing online subscriptions.

That's hard when a large share of the population feeds its news diet with freely available snippets, aggregation and social sharing of stories, providing the gist of what's happening without subscribing or visiting news sites doing the reporting.

That predicament will worsen as AI-powered web portals provide fuller news "reports" by scraping, synthesizing and regurgitating others' work, giving people even less reason to visit and pay for actual news sites.

Many news outlets are trying to prevent this by blocking the scrapers. But a handful of outlets and wire services have agreed to provide AI companies with what could be a critical mass of news content. Publishers may also give Google access so they can continue to use its dominant systems for digital advertising.

This conflict came to a head in late 2023 when Microsoft was sued by The New York Times. It alleges Microsoft and its partner OpenAI infringed copyrights by scraping millions of its s to train large language models. The publisher claims the tech companies owe billions of dollars in damages.

Badanes declined to discuss the lawsuit but noted that the business-model problems facing news existed before the rise of AI.

Meanwhile Microsoft is hearing from people in newsrooms who are "eager to understand the (AI) tools and how they can use it to be more effective at their job."

"So I think there's more optimism out there, maybe, than expressed in this particular conversation," she said.

Bourgault said Internews is aware of concerns about AI and Big Tech and "we keep a very clear-eyed view of this."

"If resources are mission focused and flexible and straightforward and untied to things, we generally are open to accepting resources from good-intentions technology companies," she said.

In this case, "it feels like Microsoft comes from a spirit of wanting to work together and do some good."

I hope so, especially if those values influence how the tech and news industries resolve their fight over copyright and fair compensation.