Matt Karolian
AI and news product leader. VP of Platforms & AI at Boston Globe Media.
You Can See Everything
- Edison Popcorn 2026. A 3D-printable popcorn bucket shaped like the Theranos Edison. 160 × 115 × 130 mm, so it fits a Bambu Lab A1 mini. Download the STL (2.7 MB). Most printed plastic isn't food-safe, so use a liner.
About
I'm VP of Platforms and AI at Boston Globe Media: The Boston Globe, Boston.com, STAT, Boston Magazine and B-Side. I founded the 01 Product Team.
I spent 2017–18 as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard, trying to figure out what AI could do to news media and publishing. I studied at the Kennedy School, Harvard College and MIT Sloan, and advised students at Kirkland House. I've worked on the problem of AI and news since 2016, when I wrote a Nieman Lab prediction that newsrooms would use AI to write data stories, give editors notes and recommend content.
Before this I was General Manager of Boston.com. Earlier at the Globe I ran social media and new initiatives, and in 2014 became its first Director of Audience Engagement. Before the Globe, advertising. I taught two classes I designed in Harvard's journalism master's program. I'm from Manchester, N.H.
Built
- The Brief 2026. Ten or so stories, five minutes, then it ends. Native iOS, our own CMS, no data collection; the personalization runs on the phone. Built with Google News Initiative and News Product Alliance support as one of twelve newsrooms in the Next Gen News Sprint, and shown at the NPA Summit in Chicago.
- DataDumpster.Boston 2026. Tracks the social accounts of 21 Boston news brands. An agent pulls the numbers and writes the weekly summary, and every number gets checked before anyone reads it. Code.
- Scan.Boston 2026. Live Boston police and fire dispatch, transcribed locally and searchable by incident, place and person. Globe reporters have used it on breaking news.
- Story Desk. Newsroom analytics from 50,000 Globe articles.
- Boston.com 2019–21. Ran it as GM. Alexa rank went from 5,700 to 2,212. Launched Boston Helps, which matched people who needed help during COVID with people who could give it, and a book club and a cocktail club that ran over Zoom during lockdown.
- AI candidate dashboard. A presidential candidate tracker that followed events and voting history, funded by the Google News Initiative.
- Cannabis vertical 2018. Coverage built around Massachusetts legalization. Thousands of paying subscribers and a newsletter with close to 100,000 readers.
- Primary Day bot 2016. An election app with one small twist. Also that year: streamed the website to Facebook Live on election night, and #FactsMatter.
- The Globe's audience function 2014. The first one. Editorial, business and analytics people on the same teams.
Wrote
- Nieman Lab predictions: AI improves publishing 2016 · Publishers come to terms with being Facebook's enablers 2018 · Media 3.0 2021 · Refocus on what really drives growth 2023
- Navigating Elon Musk's Twitterpocalypse, Nieman Reports 2022
- Substack: The Great Media Reset · The Atomization of Knowledge · 2025 will break media's addiction to ads · Newsletter winter is coming · I'm launching a new team to build the future of news
- Medium, 2016–22: Facebook's ad tool can be used for covert surveillance · Platform collapse · all
Said
- NPA Summit, Chicago: showed The Brief in "Built for Next-Gen Audiences: AI-Powered Bets from Local Newsrooms" Oct 2026
- Newsroom Robots, episode one 2023
- A Media Operator on subscription ads 2025 · AFP on AI search and publishers 2025
- Digiday: groups · notifications · Notes · audience development · post-Facebook · Bluesky · Threads
- Nieman Lab: subscribers group · Apple News · election night · Spotlight · all
- Talks: NEACE, "Building for 2030" 2026 · Facebook, Harvard, News Media Alliance, university conferences
Teaching
Designed and taught two courses in Harvard's journalism master's program, including business, technology and journalism. Nieman Fellow, Harvard, 2017–18. B.S., Emerson College.
Questions
- Who is Matt Karolian?
- Matt Karolian is an AI and news product leader at Boston Globe Media, where he is Vice President of Platforms & AI. He runs AI strategy for The Boston Globe, Boston.com, STAT, Boston Magazine and B-Side, and the 01 Team, the company's zero-to-one team. He has worked on the problem of AI and news since 2016 and was a 2018 Nieman Fellow at Harvard.
- What is the 01 Team?
- Boston Globe Media's zero-to-one team. Matt Karolian started it and runs it. It takes new ideas, mostly AI-driven ones, from prototype to testing with real readers. The Brief, DataDumpster.Boston and Scan.Boston came out of it.
- What AI products has Boston Globe Media built?
- The 01 Team has shipped The Brief (a daily news app for Greater Boston that you can finish, built with Google News Initiative support), DataDumpster.Boston (tracks the social accounts of 21 Boston news brands, with an agent writing the weekly summary), Scan.Boston (live police and fire dispatch, transcribed locally and searchable, for reporters) and Story Desk (newsroom analytics from 50,000 Globe articles). The new Boston.com app is being built in-house the same way.
- How long has Matt Karolian worked on AI in news?
- Since 2016, when he wrote a Nieman Lab prediction that newsrooms would use AI to write data stories, give editors notes on their copy and recommend content. He spent 2017–18 as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard trying to figure out what AI could do to news media and publishing, studying at the Kennedy School, Harvard College and MIT Sloan.
- What does Matt Karolian speak and write about?
- AI in journalism and publishing, building news products in-house with AI coding tools, consumer revenue and the end of ad dependence, and what stays scarce when information is free. Recent talks: The Brief at the News Product Alliance Summit in Chicago (October 2026) and NEACE's "Building for 2030."
- How do I book Matt Karolian for a talk, panel or interview?
- Email admin@karolian.com with the date, format and audience. Press and everything else: matt@karolian.com.
Press kit
Short bio, third person. Matt Karolian is an AI and news product leader at Boston Globe Media, where he is Vice President of Platforms & AI and oversees AI strategy across The Boston Globe, Boston.com, STAT, Boston Magazine and B-Side. He runs the 01 Team, the company's zero-to-one team, which built The Brief, DataDumpster.Boston and Scan.Boston. He has worked on the problem of AI and news since 2016. As a 2017–18 Nieman Fellow at Harvard he studied at the Kennedy School, Harvard College and MIT Sloan and advised students at Kirkland House. He designed and taught two courses in Harvard's journalism master's program.
One line. Matt Karolian is Vice President of Platforms & AI at Boston Globe Media and runs its 01 Team.
Contact: admin@karolian.com
Topics. AI in journalism · news products · building software in-house with AI · audience and platforms · consumer revenue · local news.
Elsewhere
Substack · LinkedIn · GitHub · Mastodon · Medium
matt@karolian.com
Scheduling and speaking: admin@karolian.com
Updated .