News Compass is a continuous harvester that pulls science articles from the GDELT Global Knowledge Graph, extracts the citations embedded in them, and enriches the cited papers against Crossref, arXiv, NCBI, and OpenAlex. The results are served through a read-only JSON API backed by Meilisearch, with a Vue single-page front end.
Science journalism routinely refers to research without linking to it. News Compass reconstructs the path from a story back to the paper, automatically and at scale.
Technical notes
Python harvesting pipeline with a durable filesystem document store that the search indexes are rebuilt from. Meilisearch is the engine the application reads; the search layer was selected through a benchmark harness that also evaluated Typesense, Weaviate, and Qdrant.
Collaboration
Built at Northwestern University's Knight Lab, in connection with Sachita Nishal'sSNSachita NishalDesigns sociotechnical systems that help people make sense of online information, including AI tools for science journalists. PhD from Northwestern; joining the University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public as a postdoc in 2026.LinkedIn ↗ research in the Northwestern Computational Journalism Lab. The system is described in Designing for Field Awareness in Science Journalism (NishalSNSachita NishalDesigns sociotechnical systems that help people make sense of online information, including AI tools for science journalists. PhD from Northwestern; joining the University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public as a postdoc in 2026.LinkedIn ↗, Horvát
Ágnes HorvátAssociate professor of communication studies and computer science at Northwestern, directing the Lab on Innovation, Networks, and Knowledge. A physicist turned computational social scientist.LinkedIn ↗, and Diakopoulos
Nicholas DiakopoulosProfessor of communication studies and computer science at Northwestern, where he directs the Computational Journalism Lab. Author of Automating the News.LinkedIn ↗), in the companion proceedings of CSCW 2026, doi 10.1145/3785651.3831513.
News Compass was an invited demo at the Computation + Journalism 2026 Symposium at Northwestern, presented by Sachita NishalSNSachita NishalDesigns sociotechnical systems that help people make sense of online information, including AI tools for science journalists. PhD from Northwestern; joining the University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public as a postdoc in 2026.LinkedIn ↗ on 2 October 2026.