Chitranshu Tewari

Product and Revenue @Newslaundry | Building ad-free news products that are powered by subscribers

[Chitranshu Tewari @chitranshoe]

.@NiemanLab has a story about our accessibility journey and how we have made our app accessible.

Shoutout to @HanaaTameez, who saw this as an important story and wrote it. Indebted to all the users who have given their time and helped us with feedback

https://t.co/h3M4wFcOfO

[Chitranshu Tewari @chitranshoe]

Check out the winning ideas. Worth a look if you are interested in how news organisations are using AI to strengthen financial sustainability and long term growth in journalism.

https://t.co/DUMmEi1Tyl

[Chitranshu Tewari @chitranshoe]

Last year, I got an opportunity to spend a few weeks reading and discussing AI ideas from leading newsrooms around the world as part of the jury for the 2025 JournalismAI Innovation Challenge.

🧵

[Chitranshu Tewari @chitranshoe]

Drew on my experience of building news products with a focus on financial sustainability, and on using innovation to grow audiences and support business outcomes. Learned lots from fellow jury members:

https://t.co/JDOzmivfeI

[Nidhi Suresh @NidhiSuresh_]

At a time when we think we’re so hurt that it paralyses us into doing nothing, VK Tripathi’s actions speak louder than our words.

“What is the utility of my body? My mind, My spirit? The utility is in looking around and if there is any injustice anywhere, I should speak out…”

[Nidhi Suresh @NidhiSuresh_]

Micheal Rezendes was part of the Boston Globe’s Spotlight team that exposed the Catholic Church’s cover-up of clergy sex abuse.

Read our story here: https://t.co/wER5a0NgxQ

[Chitranshu Tewari @chitranshoe]

Is it just me, or does the video’s opening track sound like the Succession theme? Perfect for billionaire talk

https://t.co/cQgJ4kLYZt

[Pratik Sinha @free_thinker]

I am able to use ocrmypdf (https://t.co/NtiMhMBsqR) to add a text layer to the BIHAR SIR files that have been converted by ECI from digital to unreadable-by-machine in the age of digital. This solution can be run free of cost on your computer, takes a while to convert if you have an old computer, but it allows decent amount of searching.

The command I used was:

parallel --tag -j 2 ocrmypdf -l hin+eng --optimize 3 --deskew --rotate-pages --clean '{}' 'output/{}' ::: *.pdf

You'll have to install both english and hindi language files for tesseract.

[Chitranshu Tewari @chitranshoe]

Ask Birubala, our internal AI tool at @Newslaundry, got featured on @TheAudiencers.

Built with LangChain, OpenAI, and Pinecone, it answers recurring product and subscriber queries. It saves our team time to focus on higher-agency, more meaningful work.

https://t.co/1J0t6YnmmZ

[Tanishka Sodhi @tanishka_s2]

Only one leading national newspaper found Rahul Gandhi’s findings on voter fraud to be worthy of being front page lead.

This wasn’t even a late night presser.

[newslaundry @newslaundry]

Even as Congress leader Rahul Gandhi alleged electoral theft, the most-read Hindi daily, Dainik Jagran, didn’t even carry the story on its front page. Among English dailies, only The Hindu ran it as the lead.

https://t.co/O5TPMZmCJF

[Dhanya Rajendran @dhanyarajendran]

Just wanted to remind everyone of TNM's investigation in 2023- which also focused on assembly segments in Bangalore Central seat including Mahadevapura.

We found that a Bengaluru NGO- recruited by the BBMP- working with the ECI- was stealing voter data.

Chilume NGO also ran an election management company as well as a mobile application called Digital Sameeksha that compiled voters’ data. This data was sold to politicians and parties- we showed one BJP leader who bought it.

The NGO's agents, posing as Booth Level Officers, gathered information.

As Chilume collected data, BJP pushed for thousands of voters to be deleted in Shivaji Nagar, a Muslim-dominated area.

How?

BJP sympathizers complained about 26000 fake voters without even filling due forms. Eventually (after a court case) 7,000 voters were deleted.

On ground, TNM found that many of these voters still lived in the constituency, and sometimes in the same address.

Chilume trained workers at BJP ward office.
One of our people posed as a job-seeker and got pictures from this training centre.

Then we found that people in the village of Krishnappa Ravikumar, Chilume founder were getting deposits into bank accounts ranging from ₹40,000 to ₹1,40,000 , often marked as "CSC e-Governance" transfers. These amounts were withdrawn in case and given to Ravikumar.

CSC e-Governance Services India Ltd is a Special Purpose Vehicle (CSC SPV) incorporated by Government of India

Eventually, after our investigation, many were arrested or suspended.

*BBMP cut ties with Chilume. ECI asked for revision of rolls in three assembly segments- Shivajinagar, Chickpet & Mahadevapura.*

But why did money come into villagers accounts? What happened to lists Chilume made? No proper govt probe happened (though Congress is in power now)

Our investigation found here- https://t.co/TSkaUdsblr

[Manu Sebastian @manuvichar]

@ceo_karnataka @ECISVEEP Why don’t the CEO state on oath a point by point rebuttal of the points raised by the LoP?

[Chitranshu Tewari @chitranshoe]

@baxiabhishek Yeaa. This is like the third time in two weeks I have seen a kitty party group at a coffee place

[Chitranshu Tewari @chitranshoe]

When and how did large coffee chains start replacing Haldiram-Bikanervala as the preferred venues for kitty parties?

[Chitranshu Tewari @chitranshoe]

Postcards from Chandigarh to Shimla, with a Morni Hills detour ⛰️🚴

[Chitranshu Tewari @chitranshoe]

Lost my voice screaming. Siraj you beauty. Had to be him with the last wicket

[Chitranshu Tewari @chitranshoe]

Too many AI tools in newsrooms are flashy but don’t actually solve problems.

We wanted the opposite. Something useful. Something that saves time and makes work easier.

Here's a demo of Ask Birubala: our internal AI tool

[Chitranshu Tewari @chitranshoe]

@newslaundry This idea started as a proof of concept during my time at the @newmarkjschool Journalism AI Fellowship.

With the incredible work of Rishabh Dixit, our senior dev, we turned that early idea into a real, evolving tool

[Chitranshu Tewari @chitranshoe]

Too many AI tools in newsrooms are flashy but don’t actually solve problems.

We wanted the opposite. Something useful. Something that saves time and makes work easier.

Here's a demo of Ask Birubala: our internal AI tool

[Chitranshu Tewari @chitranshoe]

@newslaundry It’s built with OpenAI, LangChain, Pinecone, and a lightweight React frontend. The goal was simple: create a single source of truth for everything from subscription issues to product stack documentation, while keeping a human in the loop.