Washington Post taps Connelly as senior editor for AI strategy and innovation

Phoebe Connelly is taking on a new role as senior editor for AI strategy and innovation at the Washington Post.

Connelly has spent two and a half years leading the Next Generation Initiative – a cross-functional team that helped the company reorient to serve the needs of younger audiences. The Next Gen team saw the potential of AI early; they hosted our first AI Hackathon in March of last year and have led several internal experiments around article summarization, chat bots and recirculation that leveraged generative AI.

In this new role, Connelly will lead the Post’s efforts to employ generative AI and other emerging technologies in the service of The Washington Post’s mission to inform, empower and delight our readers. She will ensure the development of ambitious news-gathering tools and user-facing experiences aligned with The Post’s standards and overarching editorial and business goals.

In close partnership with the full masthead, Connelly will develop and manage a roadmap of AI tooling and user-facing experiences and convene conversations and working groups to spur our usage of generative AI for our most ambitious work. She will also work with the standards team on the development of protocols and standards around the use of AI by journalists and ensure the company as a whole adopts this technology in fast, thoughtful ways.

She will report to Executive Editor Sally Buzbee and have a dotted line to Chief Technology Officer Vineet Khosla.