OpenAI Brings ChatGPT Edu to Journalism Schools at CUNY and Northwestern

OpenAI will provide more than 400 ChatGPT Edu subscriptions to graduate students and faculty at CUNY's Newmark J-School and Northwestern University's Medill School for the 2026–2027 academic year. The company is pairing the tool access with collaborations at the Tow-Knight Center for Journalism Futures and Medill's Knight Lab, which it calls the first partners in a new phase of its journalism support work.

The stakes for newsrooms are considerable. Journalism students entering classrooms this year are preparing for one of the most dynamic and difficult moments in the history of the news industry, according to OpenAI's announcement. The company argues AI already helps reporters, editors, and business teams analyze public records faster, translate stories for broader audiences, uncover patterns in large datasets, search archives, improve reader experiences, and build new products — freeing time for reporting, verification, and storytelling.

For OpenAI, the program also serves a commercial and reputational function. The company faces ongoing tension with publishers over the use of news content to train AI models, and initiatives like this one position OpenAI as a partner to journalism rather than a threat. The announcement did not address training-data disputes directly.

What the schools said

Gina Chua, Executive Director of the Tow-Knight Center, framed generative AI as an inevitability the industry must shape. "Generative AI is a transformative technology that will remake the information landscape, and one that the journalism industry will need to adapt to and shape in order to fulfill our mission of informing the public," Chua said. "We intend for the Newmark community to be at the forefront of this transformation, and it's critical that they learn about and be immersed in this technology. We're very grateful to OpenAI for making the tools available to our students and faculty so they can better prepare themselves for this future."

Jeremy Gilbert, Medill Professor and Knight Chair in Digital Media Strategy, emphasized access. "The media industry is rapidly evolving, and AI is a major driver of this change," Gilbert said. "The Knight Lab is committed to ensuring that any Medill graduate students who want to use the latest AI tools and techniques can do so without cost being a barrier. Offering equity of access is crucial when incorporating new technologies. The Knight Lab has been working at the intersection of media and AI for more than a decade. This support from OpenAI helps us to continue to explore the future of media and technology, allowing faculty to teach and practice journalism in countless new ways."

Tom Rubin, Chief of Intellectual Property and Content at OpenAI, described the program as an extension of three years of news-industry partnerships. "Over the past three years, OpenAI has partnered closely with leaders across the news industry to help both established and aspiring journalists make the most of AI, while keeping their human expertise front and center," Rubin said. "We're excited to see what the next generation of reporters and editors will accomplish with AI as they carry forward journalism's proud tradition of serving communities through their vital work."

Training, not just tools

OpenAI's announcement acknowledges that access alone is insufficient. Students need opportunities to experiment, develop responsible workflows, understand the technology's limitations, and learn where human judgment matters most, the company states. Through the program, the Tow-Knight Center and the Knight Lab will help students explore how AI can support investigations, data analysis, brainstorming, storytelling formats, and questioning — while preserving the roles of reporters, editors, producers, and newsroom leaders.

A broader portfolio of journalism programs

The education initiative builds on an existing set of partnerships OpenAI lists in the announcement:

• American Journalism Project: Through a renewed partnership, all 50+ news organizations in AJP's portfolio can access ChatGPT enterprise and API credits. AJP's Product & AI Studio will turn the strongest use cases into reusable tools and infrastructure and share playbooks across the portfolio and the broader nonprofit and local news community.

• Lenfest Institute for Journalism: OpenAI continues supporting the Lenfest AI Collaborative and Fellowship program, funding AI engineering fellows at major local news organizations. Projects have focused on reporting on public data, making archives more accessible, developing products that expand audience reach, and growing advertising, subscription, and membership revenue.

• WAN-IFRA: A partnership launched in 2024 has supported multiple stages of the Newsroom AI Catalyst accelerator program, which has served over 165 newsrooms across Europe, Asia Pacific, South Asia, Latin America, and Australia and New Zealand. The program offers training, technical assistance, strategy development, and OpenAI API credits.

INMA: Ongoing work supporting international news organizations, including regional discussions with industry leaders from Europe, Latin America, and Asia Pacific, webinars, and OpenAI API credits for hands-on building.

The Newmark and Medill program extends this work upstream — before students enter newsrooms. OpenAI traces its education efforts to 2023, when it provided a grant to help launch the Ethics and Journalism Initiative at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, which studies AI and journalism among other topics.

Conference engagement and OpenAI Academy

This year, OpenAI has hosted meetings and trainings at the National Association of Black Journalists conference, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists conference, the Asian American Journalists Association conference, and NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists conference. The company says it listened to journalists' needs, shared hands-on examples, and helped reporters explore practical uses of AI in daily work.

That engagement informed the continued expansion of OpenAI Academy for News Organizations, a learning hub offering practical training, newsroom-relevant use cases, playbooks, and real-world examples for journalists and publishers using AI.

OpenAI says additional phases of its journalism work are actively being developed, with more efforts underway to expand support across the journalism education ecosystem.