Mississippi Today is one of the most respected nonprofit newsrooms in the American South. Their investigative reporting on education, health, and politics has won national awards and changed state policy. But their team of 30 journalists couldn’t be everywhere at once — and readers had questions at all hours.
“We were seeing readers arrive on our site, read one article, and leave,” said their audience engagement editor. “They wanted more context, but there was no easy way to get it.”
That changed when they connected Suwali to their content library.
The challenge: making six years of journalism findable
Mississippi Today has published thousands of articles since 2016. Their beat reporters know their archives inside out. Their readers don’t.
When a new story broke about Medicaid expansion in the state, readers landing on the article had no easy way to understand the years of reporting that led to that moment — the legislative fights, the failed votes, the advocates who kept pushing. The context was all there. It just wasn’t accessible.
They needed something that could surface the right story at the right moment, without requiring a reader to already know what to search for.
How Suwali works for their team
Mississippi Today connected their article archive to Suwali and embedded the chatbot directly into their site. Readers can now ask plain-language questions — “What happened with Medicaid in Mississippi?” or “What has Mississippi Today reported on school funding?” — and get answers drawn directly from published journalism, with links back to the original articles.
Three things stood out to their team:
- Source fidelity. Suwali only draws from Mississippi Today’s own content. It won’t invent facts or pull from outside sources. Every answer is grounded in something their reporters wrote and editors approved.
- Reader signals. The dashboard shows what readers are actually asking. That data has directly shaped editorial decisions — two recent explainers were assigned specifically because the chatbot revealed a gap in their coverage.
- Minimal setup. Their team was up and running in under a week. No engineering resources required.
What they’ve seen since launch
In the first three months after launching Suwali, Mississippi Today saw readers who interacted with the chatbot spend significantly more time on the site and visit more articles per session than those who didn’t.
More importantly, the questions coming through the chatbot became a direct feedback channel to the newsroom. Readers were asking about topics the team hadn’t prioritized. Some of those questions turned into assignments.
“It’s like having a really well-read colleague available all the time,” their editor said. “One who has read everything we’ve ever published and can find it instantly.”
Ready to see what Suwali can do for your newsroom?
Whether you’re a small local outlet or a large media network, Suwali is built to work with your content and your audience. Book a demo with our team or start a free trial to explore it yourself.
