Primary Launches the World's First AI Index of Journalism

Built on more than 2 million sources and ratings of over 20,000 journalists, Primary introduces a new standard for measuring journalism in the age of artificial intelligence.

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Today, Primary announced the launch of the Primary Index, the world's first AI-generated index of journalism.

Built on more than 2 million original articles and covering over 20,000 journalists, the Primary Index uses artificial intelligence to evaluate journalism at a scale that has never before been possible. To date, more than 25 billion tokens have been utilized in the rigorous analysis of published journalism. Rather than measuring popularity, engagement, or ideology, the Index is designed to assess the quality of journalism itself—drawing on evidence, sourcing, expertise, transparency, and accuracy.

The launch marks a significant step toward creating an independent layer of infrastructure for the information economy, providing readers, publishers, researchers, AI systems, and advertisers with a common standard for assessing journalistic quality.

"The internet created an index for webpages. Social media created an index for attention," said Dr Aron D'Souza, Founder of Primary. "But journalism has never had an objective index. We believe that should change."

The idea for Primary began more than a decade ago during Dr D'Souza's role leading the litigation strategy for entrepreneur Peter Thiel in the landmark legal case against Gawker Media. The case exposed fundamental questions about media accountability, editorial standards, incentives, and public trust.

"That experience forced me to think deeply about how journalism is evaluated," said D'Souza. "Markets reward attention. Awards recognize a tiny fraction of reporting. But there has never been a comprehensive, evidence-based way to measure journalistic performance across the industry. Advances in AI finally make that possible."

As AI becomes the primary interface through which billions of people consume information, objective signals about the quality of journalism will become increasingly important. The Primary Index is designed to provide those signals—not by replacing editorial judgment, but by augmenting it with computational analysis at global scale.

At launch, the Primary Index has analyzed more than 2 million articles and produced ratings for over 20,000 journalists across major news organizations. Future releases will expand coverage to hundreds of thousands of journalists, additional languages, publications, and geographic markets.

Primary believes that better incentives produce better journalism. By making journalistic quality measurable, the company aims to reward original reporting, specialist expertise, rigorous sourcing, transparency, and consistent accuracy.

"Journalism is one of the most important institutions in society," said D'Souza. "If we can measure quality more effectively, we can help improve the incentives that shape it. Our ambition is to build the trust layer for news in the AI era."

Learn more at theprimary.com

About Primary

Primary is an AI-native news and intelligence company building infrastructure for trustworthy information. Combining human expertise with computational journalism, Primary develops AI systems that verify reporting, evaluate journalistic performance, and help people—and increasingly AI agents—identify the world's most reliable journalism.