Every $1 donated will be matched 1:1 up to $200,000 by the Survival and Flourishing Fund.

Our main public fundraiser is here - we'll aim to keep both pages updated to reflect the total amount of matched funding remaining (Last updated: 17 Sep 25) .

Project summary

The Tarbell Center supports journalism that helps society navigate the development and deployment of increasingly advanced AI. We provide funding, training, and a professional network to strengthen AI reporting at major news outlets.

At present, we have four main programs:

• Tarbell Fellowship – A 12-month program providing early-career journalists with AI training, a stipend of up to $70,000, and a 9-month placement at a major newsroom (e.g. The Guardian, Bloomberg, MIT Tech Review, TIME, The Verge, South China Morning Post, and more).

• Tarbell Grants – Awards of $1,000–$15,000 to support original AI reporting. In 2025, we plan to distribute $350k in grants, supporting freelance journalists, staff reporters, and small teams at newsrooms.

• Residencies – Provides senior writers with the time and resources to produce in-depth AI reporting.

• Transformer – A publication founded within Tarbell which aims to become the definitive source of news and analysis about transformative AI for key decision-makers.

Since launching in 2022, Tarbell has grown rapidly — training dozens of early-career and senior journalists, funding high-impact reporting, and shaping the broader media conversation on AI. By 2030, we aim to support 10,000 high-quality stories on AI at major outlets and scale Tarbell into the leading institution supporting AI journalism globally.

Journalism is essential to navigating transformative AI

Advanced AI could be developed in 5-20 years and might pose societal scale risks, e.g. AI-enabled bioterrorism, loss of control from misaligned AI systems, mass unemployment, etc. Journalism will play a crucial role during this transition: keeping decision makers informed, holding powerful actors accountable, and demystifying complex debates.

Without strong AI journalism:

• Voluntary commitments can go unenforced. In lieu of regulation, journalists can hold companies accountable to meeting their Frontier Safety Policies.

• Corporate lobbying operates in shadows. Investigations can highlight the influence industry wields on AI regulation, as with California's SB 1047 or the new pro-AI super-PAC “Leading the Future”.

• Warning shots for AI risk are missed. Reporters with deep AI expertise can correctly identify AI incidents which provide early evidence of worrying threat models and communicate them with the appropriate level of urgency to decision makers.

• Decision-makers lack crucial information. Policymakers, company employees, and others need accurate reporting to make risk-informed choices about humanity's future.

AI reporting is not on track

Without intervention, newsrooms will likely fail to cover AI with the urgency required & critical stories will go unreported. Some key factors here include:

• Systemic underfunding of journalism. Most news outlets lack reliable revenue streams, leading to:

  • Expensive reporting projects being neglected, especially deep investigations. Investigations into frontier AI companies or lobbying practices require significant time and resources that most newsrooms cannot spare, leading to systematic underinvestment in accountability journalism.

  • Limited editorial capacity: Reduced newsroom staff means editors must focus on immediate news cycles rather than developing expertise in specialized beats like AI governance. There is enough happening within AI that even the typical tech desk deeply engaged with AI development will tend to prioritise model releases, funding deals, etc. from the frontier companies rather than longer-term trends.

  • Understaffing of critical beats. Fewer reporters means systematic neglect of important but less immediately newsworthy developments, such as technical research findings or policy developments in jurisdictions like China.

• Scepticism among journalists about the possibility that transformative AI could be developed within 20 years or pose societal-scale risks. A key reason here is that few journalists have deeply engaged with evidence for potential AI risks, including alignment research findings, capability progression metrics, or the underlying drivers of AI progress (compute scaling, algorithmic improvements, etc.).

Tarbell's vision is for reporting about AI to be treated with at least the urgency of other societal-scale challenges such as climate change. We’d like to ensure that every major newsroom has a dedicated team of reporters with a deep understanding of the societal-scale risks that advanced AI could pose.

How will this funding be used?

We're raising an additional $6.4m to establish Tarbell as the leading institution supporting AI journalism globally in 2026 by:

• Expanding our fellowship program from 16 to 20 fellows annually in 2026, including 5 senior fellows with >5 years journalism experience. We aim to secure partnerships with 5+ tier 1 outlets like the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and Financial Times.

• Scaling our grants program from $400k to $800k in funding distributed annually in 2026, doubling our support for original AI reporting while maintaining our quality standards. 

• Launching institutional grantmaking with $500k distributed via a pilot program in 2026 to directly fund newsrooms, verticals, and new outlets producing in-depth reporting on transformative AI.

• Building a fully-fledged residency program supporting 8 senior journalists annually by 2027 with 6-12 month residencies to provide established reporters with dedicated time and resources to develop authoritative AI expertise.

• Growing Transformer publication from 6,000 to 40,000+ subscribers with a 5-person team publishing multiple times weekly, establishing it as the definitive source of news and analysis about transformative AI for key decision-makers in government and industry.

Our team

• Cillian Crosson, Executive Director. Cillian is an impact-focused entrepreneur. He founded Tarbell in 2022 after participating in Charity Entrepreneurship, a non-profit incubator. He previously co-founded Talos Network and Training for Good.

• Leah Harrison, Partnerships Director. Leah is an experienced financial journalist with over two decades of experience at Bloomberg. She has worked as a newsroom trainer, reporter, and managing editor of QuickTake.

• Sawyer Bernath, Operations Director. Sawyer is an experienced non-profit professional. He served as Executive Director of the Berkeley Existential Risk Initiative, an organisation providing support to academics. He serves as a board member of FAR AI and SecureBio.

• Shakeel Hashim, Editor. Transformer. Shakeel is a business and technology reporter. He worked as a news editor at The Economist and now leads Transformer, a publication covering transformative AI.

• & many others (see our full list of team members here)

Our track record (2022-2025)

• Supported 50+ journalists to cover AI at top newsrooms through our fellowship, grants, and residencies. This includes:

  • 25 placements for early-career journalists at leading outlets such as Bloomberg, The Guardian, and Time magazine via our fellowship. Examples include:

    • Rocket Drew at The Information

    • Aisha Down at The Guardian

    • Vincent Chow at South China Morning Post

    • Harry Booth at Time magazine

    • Jakub Kraus at Lawfare

    • Nilesh Christopher at the LA Times

  • 25+ projects funded via our grants program. Examples include:

    • AI weapons for Westminster? ‘Defence disruptor’ Anduril trains its sights on the UK. Published in The Bureau of Investigative and POLITICO.

    • Power Hungry: AI and our energy future. Published in MIT Technology Review.

    • How to evaluate the safety of artificial intelligence models. Published in Le Monde around the 2025 Paris AI Summit.

  • 3 senior reporters supported via our residency program.

    • Yi-Ling Liu (2025 journalist in residence), previously China Editor @ Rest of World. Yi-Ling is covering AI developments in China, among other topics.

    • Shakeel Hashim (2024 journalist in residence), previously News Editor @ The Economist. Shakeel’s residency has since evolved into a permanent position at Tarbell, growing Transformer.

    • Nathaniel Popper (2024 journalist in residence), previously Technology Correspondent @ The New York Times. Nathaniel spent 6 months researching AI and exploring future AI journalism projects before joining Bloomberg as an editor.

• 42% of full-time fellowship alumni have successfully transitioned to journalism roles at leading outlets so far. Other alumni continue to work as freelance reporters, have accepted 12-month extensions at their placement outlet funded by Tarbell, or have transitioned to impactful roles outside of journalism.

• Transformer has grown to 6,000+ subscribers. Transformer, our in-house publication, has positively influenced AI discourse having been cited by NYT, Politico, Semafor, Financial Times, The Times (UK), and many more.

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Every $1 donated will be matched 1:1 up to $200,000 by the Survival and Flourishing Fund.