An AI Company Wanted to Buy My Reporting Notes

A “data procurement worker” reached out. I was too curious to resist a meeting about their plans.

A LinkedIn message arrived with an unusual subject line: “Licensing newsroom archives—paid.” It was sent by a “data procurement worker” for a company called Handshake, which describes itself as a “job search platform.” The message read, “Hi Jules. Odd approach, but a real one. Handshake licenses genuine professional documents to test how well AI handles actual knowledge work.”

I wondered what such a request could possibly have to do with me, so I read on, and learned that Handshake was seeking “one story followed all the way through, rather than published articles alone.” The company would be happy to pay for documents related to journalism work, including “the pitch, reporting notes, interview transcripts, FOIA responses and source documents, the successive drafts, the editor’s markup, the published piece, and any correction that followed. That progression—draft to published to correction—is the single most useful thing a newsroom holds for us.”