Frédéric Filloux, a veteran journalist and editor from France, will spend six months of the 2017-18 academic year in residence at the John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships program at Stanford University as a JSK Senior Research Fellow. Filloux will address the growing problem of misinformation on the web by developing a working prototype of his News Quality Scoring Project, which seeks to surface quality journalism using algorithms and machine learning.
The JSK Fellowships is a professional program that supports innovation, entrepreneurship and leadership in journalism around the world, selecting up to 20 fellows each year. Filloux, who was a JSK Fellow at Stanford during the 2016-17 academic year, returns in a unique, one-time role that capitalizes on a confluence of events in the industry and society.
“Misinformation and fake news are overwhelming many readers,” said Dawn Garcia, director of the JSK Fellowships. “Frédéric’s work offers a possible solution that will be of value to publishers and advertisers, and, in the end, make quality news and information more accessible to the public. The timing of his project, recent recognition of his work on a national scale, and the existence of complementary initiatives created a rare opportunity for him and for JSK.”
In June, the News Quality Scoring Project was one of 20 ideas that each received a Knight Prototype Fund grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Democracy Fund and the Rita Allen Foundation to combat misinformation and build reader trust. The $50,000 grant will be used to cover the development costs of the project.
“I’m immensely grateful for the support of the JSK Fellowships to the News Quality Scoring Project,” said Filloux. “By reconnecting the production costs of great journalism to its commercial value, the News Quality Scoring Project aims at being an important contribution to the sustainability of the news ecosystem, in addition to addressing the misinformation issue. Pursuing it in the exceptional ecosystem of Stanford University is a unique opportunity.”
Filloux will also be a resource for the 2017-18 JSK Fellows, who will begin their fellowship year in September. By developing the News Quality Scoring Project as a JSK Senior Research Fellow, Filloux will benefit from the program’s proximity to other leading journalism initiatives at Stanford, including the Stanford Computational Journalism Lab and the Brown Institute for Media Innovation.
Filloux is well known as the editor of the Monday Note, a newsletter and blog that covers digital business models and technology. The Monday Note, launched in 2007, reaches about 30,000 media professionals each week, and is hosted by Medium and republished by Quartz. Prior to the Monday Note, Filloux spent four years as head of the digital for Groupe Les Echos, France’s main business news provider. From 2007 until 2010, Frédéric Filloux worked as an editor for the international division of the Norwegian media group Schibsted ASA. In 2002, he was part of the management team that launched the free daily 20 Minutes, which became the most read newspaper in France.
Before that, Filloux spent most of his career at Liberation, an innovative French media company. He was a business reporter, New York correspondent, editor of the multimedia section, manager of online operations, and finally, editor of the paper. Filloux is a board member of the Global Editors Network and Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans Frontières). He is a graduate of Bordeaux Journalism School in France.
He can be reached at filloux@stanford.edu or @filloux.
The John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships at Stanford University is looking for passionate journalists, innovators and entrepreneurs who are creating the new models, tools and approaches that are redefining journalism. As widespread change has swept the industry, our core mission has remained the same: to improve the quality of news and information reaching the public.