AnNahar (Lebanon newspaper) | Active Journalism | 2025
Ninety Years of Newspapers Finally Stood Up / AnNahar "Active Journalism"
Lebanon is a country that failed to choose a president 14 times in two years. So a long-established newspaper took action. It put forward an AI, trained on 90 years of its own articles, as a presidential candidate.
The problem
Lebanon had gone more than two years without a president, with parliament failing to elect one 13 times. The company behind the move, AnNahar, is a long-established newspaper founded in 1933, with a past that includes the assassination of an editor-in-chief and a reporter. The challenge was how to reach citizens who had grown disillusioned with politics.
The insight
Human leaders get pulled around by corruption and the hunger for power. But if you stack up 90 years of fair reporting, surely you could arrive at transparent, rational political judgment—that was the bet.
The idea
They trained an AI on the entirety of AnNahar's 90 years of newspaper pages, giving it the ability to understand context. They first ran a teaser that kept its identity hidden, then unveiled it as a "presidential candidate" when editor-in-chief Nayla Tueni interviewed the AI live on air. The newspaper's pages became a place where the AI discussed policy, and they also launched a website where citizens could ask it questions directly.
What happened
Subscribers increased by 28%, more than 100,000 questions came in, and the special edition recorded the highest sales in the paper's 90-year history. The AI was reportedly even invited to an actual cabinet meeting to join policy discussions.
Afterthought
Simply reporting the news was no longer enough. By entrusting 90 years of memory to an AI, the newspaper handed a silenced nation a voice that would actually talk back—that was the move.
