Story Discovery At Scale

April 3-4, 2025 at McClatchy Hall, Stanford University

The Story Discovery at Scale conference brings together an emerging cohort of thought leaders and practitioners in the fields of computation and journalism to address challenges and explore potential collaborative work.

The third year of this conclave – hosted by Big Local News at Stanford University, and sponsored by the Knight Foundation – is designed to foster conversation and the sharing of new ventures. This year, we will identify focused, collaborative projects for the community to develop with Big Local News.

As part of the conference, you will have opportunities to share your projects and areas of interest. Researchers and computational journalists will present some of the latest techniques for story discovery in the news. There will be deep dives into key areas: automation, generative AI tools for data extraction, product development, and processing large troves of information in smarter ways, and in ways that will support telling stories.

We look forward to seeing you soon.

Schedule

Day One – Thursday, April 3

9:00 – 10:00 a.m.

Welcome, breakfast, and introductions

10:00 – 10:30 a.m.

Moving from the possibilities to the real. Next steps

Speakers:

Marc Lavallee – Knight Foundation
Cheryl Phillips – Big Local News

10:30 – 11:30 a.m.

Project Share: Blue sky

We will hear about the blue-sky projects you're dreaming about and your wish lists for new tools and techniques to develop. Speakers will have 5 minutes to present their project work or early-stage ideas, with an eye toward surfacing potential areas for collaboration.

Speakers:

Aaron Mendelson
Ariel Zirulnick
Dana Chiueh
Subbu Vincent

11:40 a.m. – Noon

An intro to our working groups

Noon – 1:15 p.m.

Lunch (provided) and project working group selections

1:15 – 2:30 p.m.

Expert Share by Monica Lam

Monica Lam, faculty director of the Stanford Open Virtual Assistant Laboratory, expands on the revolutionary advancements in LLM technologies and her lab's open-source knowledge assistant that can enhance the productivity of researchers, journalists, and historians. This talk will discuss the technological breakthroughs, a case study in journalism, new research frontiers, and the technical feasibility of providing free AI access to knowledge worldwide.

2:30 – 3:10 p.m.

A look at what's new in the world of AI and LLMs and what we learned in 2024

More information soon

Speaker:

Simon Willison

3:15 – 5:00 p.m.

Topical breakout working groups

5:00 – 6:00 p.m.

Take some time to explore campus

Explore campus

6:00 – 9:00 p.m.

A dinner buffet

Day Two – Friday, April 4

9:00 – 9:50 a.m.

Breakfast and networking

10:00 – 10:50 a.m.

Project Share round 2: In-flight

Attendees will have 5 minutes for a lighting-talk style session to present their own projects, with an eye toward surfacing potential areas for collaboration. The focus here will be on projects that are well under way or are complete.

Speakers:

Andrew Rockway
Candice Mays
Gabe Kahn
Suraj Thapa

11:00 a.m. – Noon

Collaboration at Scale: From local to national

Join journalists in discussing new ways to collaborate across local newsrooms and beyond. We explore how to target and scale data-driven work for greater impact. We'll also talk about best practices and lessons learned for starting a collaboration between local newsrooms using data.