24 Webinars this week about AI, Journalism & Media

Tue, Jan 27- Journalism, Media, & Technology Trends and Predictions 2026

What: This report examines how generative AI, shifting audience behaviors, and the rise of creators are accelerating change across the news industry. Join the lead as he presents and discusses the report’s key findings.

Who: Mitali Mukherjee Director, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism; Nic Newman, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism; Joanna Webster, Global Editor, Agency News Strategy, Reuters.

When: 9 am, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism

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Tue, Jan 27- Rethinking Visual Design in eLearning with Generative AI

What: We’ll explore how AI-powered image generation is reshaping the way instructional designers create visuals for eLearning. You’ll see how generative AI can help you move beyond generic stock images to create purposeful, contextual, and consistent visuals—faster than ever before.

Who: Sharath Ramaswamy Senior eLearning Evangelist, Adobe.

When: 11 am, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Adobe

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Tue, Jan 27- How journalism collaboratives can accept corporate sponsorships

What: This webinar will help collaboratives understand the range of sponsorship opportunities, including in-kind partnerships, event sponsorship support, and funding for editorial projects, with a focus on how they can work effectively for journalism collaboratives.

Who: Emily Dresslar, Partnerships & Philanthropy at The Assembly.

When: 12 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Center for Cooperative Media

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Tue, Jan 27- Enhancing independence with the Meta Glasses

What: This workshop will explore the emerging role of Meta Glasses as assistive technology and examine how wearable AI can enhance independence and everyday functioning for people with diverse needs. We will highlight features such as object identification and text interpretation, along with practical examples across school, work, home, and community settings. The session will also demonstrate how the glasses can be pivotal for users with mobility limitations, low vision, or executive function challenges.

When: 1 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Pacer Center

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Tue, Jan 27- 2026 AI Trends That Will Transform Your Organization

What: Learn practical strategies to strengthen digital visibility, protect your data, personalize outreach at scale, and streamline internal processes with intelligent automation. Whether your organization is just beginning its AI journey or is looking to accelerate adoption, this presentation and Q&A will empower you to confidently navigate the future and position your team for long-term success. Tapp Network will guide you through actionable steps to harness AI as a strategic advantage and become a leader in innovation within your industry.

Who: Joe DiGiovanni, Tapp Network, Co-Founder; Kyle Barkins, Tapp Network , Co-Founder.

When: 1 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: TechSoup

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Tue, Jan 27- Should publishers block AI bots from scraping their content?

What: We will show you how AI actually impacts different types of publishers, how blocking AI bots impacts your visibility and website traffic, loopholes that AI companies use to scrape your content, and how to block AI bots effectively.

Who: Eric Shanfelt Founding Partner, Nearview Media.

When: 1 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Local Media Association

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Tue, Jan 27- Ghostwriting, Meet AI: Build a Custom GPT That Captures Your Exec’s Voice  

What: We will guide you step-by-step through building a GPT that writes in your executive’s voice. Following this webinar, you’ll have a tool ready to draft posts, speeches, internal memos or thought-leadership pieces, retaining tone, cadence and personality while giving your team speed and scale.    

Who: Allison Carter is the editor-in-chief of PR Daily and Ragan Communications.

When: 3 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: $40 members.

Sponsor: Public Relations Society of America

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Wed, Jan 28 - Datawrapper’s API: A Beginner’s Guide with Python

What: How to use Datawrapper’s API with Python to automate chart creation and integrate data visualization into your workflow.

Who: Datawrapper Product Specialist Guillermina Sutter Schneider.

When: 12 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Datawrapper

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Wed, Jan 28 - ChatGPT at Work: What Top Performers are Doing Differently

What: We’ll share what top-performing ChatGPT users do differently to change how they work, their impact, and their career trajectory.

Who: Jen Beltran, AI Deployment Manager, OpenAI.

When: 12 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: OpenAI Academy

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Wed, Jan 28 - Building AI-Ready Teams: Unlocking Your People’s Potential in Partnership With AI

What: In this webinar, you’ll learn how to:  Build your team’s confidence in using AI and clarity around its use within your organization; Model responsible use, remove roadblocks and celebrate wins so that new workflows stick and scale; Spot high-value AI opportunities and create repeatable habits that spread AI adoption and results; Guide yourself and your team to use AI with purpose, consistency and measurable outcomes.

When: 1 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: FranklinCovey

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Wed, Jan 28 - Freelance Pitch Panel  

What: Freelancers of all experience levels will learn from seasoned editors about best pitching practices and common pitching pitfalls, have their pitches critiqued and get advice on how to build a robust and diverse freelance portfolio.

Who: Allison Entrekin, Executive Editor, Southbound Magazine; Paul Fain, Co-founder and Editor, Work Shift; Lou Harry, Editor-in-Chief, Quill Magazine; Collin Kelley, Executive Editor, Atlanta Intown and Rough Draft; Laura Kate Whitney, Editor-at-Large, Good Grit.

Mark Woolsey, SPJ Georgia At-Large Board Member

When: 6:30 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Society of Professional Journalists, Georgia

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Wed, Jan 28 - AI-Palooza: Tools for Journalists & Communicators

What: Ways journalists and communicators can use AI ethically, enabling both groups to do their jobs smarter and better.

Who: Benét Wilson, owner/editor-in-chief of Aviation Queen.

When: 7 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: National Association of Black Journalists

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Wed, Jan 28 - Citizen Journalism 101: Local Voices, Real Stories

What: The Power of Local Stories — Mission, Ideas & Purpose - Why local journalism matters — from holding power to celebrating people. Explore different types of stories; Finding your first story; Where stories begin.

Who: Journalist Kristin Palpini.

When: 7 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Urban Media Arts

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Thu, Jan 29 - Collecting Public Opinion During Conflict

What: How AI-assisted methods can be applied to actual public opinion research, especially on highly sensitive and polarized issues. It provides valuable insights for exploring new methods of polling and consensus-building.

Who: Andrew Konya, Remesh USA.

When: 9 am, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: World Association for Public Opinion Research

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Thu, Jan 29 - Social Media Marketing

What: This session breaks down social media marketing into manageable steps you can actually maintain.  You’ll learn: How to choose the right platforms for your business; What types of posts work best; How to stay consistent without burnout.

When: 11:30 am

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Small Business Development Center, Gannon University 

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Thu, Jan 29 - Disinformation Detox: Teaching Disinformation from Inside the Information Ecosystem

What: Participants will leave with a complete worked example of the assignment, a menu of theoretical lenses.This session is designed for media and information literacy educators who want to move beyond fact-checking checklists toward pedagogical practices that mirror the complexity of the information systems our students inhabit.     

Who: Gina Marcello, Rutgers University.

When: 12 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Media Education Lab

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Thu, Jan 29 - Covering Policies that Restrict DEI 

What: Hear from a policy analyst, civil rights lawyer and journalist who can provide attendees with insights into policies and legislation from the state house to the White House. Reporters can expect to walk away with tools to stay ahead of the story and avoid missing critical developments happening in legislative halls, federal agencies, college campuses and classrooms.

Who: Arthur Coleman, founding partner, EducationCounsel; Heidi Tseu, assistant vice president of national engagement, American Council on Education; Brooklyn Draisey, higher education reporter, Iowa Capital Dispatch.

When: 1 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Education Writers Association

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Thu, Jan 29 - The 2026 Advertising Reset: Frameworks for AI and Measurement

What: How to support faster audience creation, more resilient measurement, and smarter budget decisions across paid media, without sacrificing governance or control. You’ll see how leaders are navigating new advertising hurdles with AI-driven systems that connect audience intelligence, real-time qualification, rapid experimentation, and continuous optimization.

Who: Sohail Wadera, Senior Engineering Manager, Autodesk; Colleen Wolfe, Uniphore.

When: 1 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Uniphore

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Thu, Jan 29 - Copyright in the Age of Generative AI

What: Stay informed on how shifting copyright laws and policy debates are responding to generative AI. This session explores recent legislative developments, emerging case law, and practical guidance for libraries navigating AI driven content and copyright questions.

When: 1 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Idaho Commission for Libraries

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Thu, Jan 29 - Strategies for Overcoming Writer's Block 

What: Tips and tricks that will get you in the flow and writing like a professional. Whether you're a beginner or advanced, these tools are ones that anyone will find enlightening and invaluable.

Who: Derek Taylor Kent is the author of 19 books.

When: 1:30 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Author Learning Center

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Thu, Jan 29 - What’s New with AI in PowerPoint Copilot?

What: You’ll see how Copilot can help develop story outlines that relate to your audience, create highly graphic slides, manipulate images, update data, align slide content, and create useful summaries and handouts to share as resources afterwards. And, given that this is being written several months before we go live, who knows what else will come through. 

Who: Richard Goring, Director, BrightCarbon.

When: 3 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: ispring

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Thu, Jan 29 - Amplify your voice: How to build credibility and connections on LinkedIn

What: How to use LinkedIn with the intention to build authentic connections, expand your reach, and strengthen your professional reputation.  

Who: Cory Welsh, LinkedIn

When: 3 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: USC Anneberg School for Communication & Journalism

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Fri, Jan 30 - How to Legally Protect Your Newsgathering, with the Cornell First Amendment Clinic's Local Journalism Project

What: A free webinar for journalists on how they can legally protect their newsgathering.  The program will include a refresher on the basics of defamation law, how to strengthen an article against any potential defamation claim, what to avoid in terms of internal communications that could be twisted in later litigation, best practices for protecting sources, your right to record law enforcement, etc.

When: 11 am, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: The Cornell Law School First Amendment Clinic

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Fri, Jan 30 - ASERL Copyright Office Hour

What: Please bring your puzzling and perplexing copyright questions.

When: 3 pm, Eastern

Where: Zoom

Cost: Free

Sponsor: Association of Southeastern Research Libraries

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22 Recent Articles about AI & Journalism

AI makes human journalists more important than ever - Harvard’s Nieman Lab  

AI is changing the relationship between journalist and audience. There is much at stake – The Guardian

Google will look beyond volume journalism - Harvard’s Nieman Lab  

Why The Washington Post launched an error-ridden AI product - Semafor

The AI widgets taking over news sites and extracting our data. – Columbia Journalism Review

5 predictions for AI’s growing role in the media in 2026 – Fast Company 

News product teams are uniquely positioned to unlock AI value - Harvard’s Nieman Lab   

Google is experimentally replacing news headlines with AI clickbait nonsense – The Verge

In 2026, AI will outwrite humans - Harvard’s Nieman Lab 

Journalist Caught Publishing Fake Articles Generated by AI – Futurism

Politico management violated key AI adoption safeguards, arbitrator finds – Harvard’s Nieman Lab  

Announcing our new AI partnership with Microsoft – Business Insider

Florida nonprofit news reporters ask board to investigate their editor’s AI use - Harvard’s Nieman Lab   

What the iconic writers of New Journalism can teach us in the AI era – Poynter

How an AI-mediated world transforms news consumption. – Columbia Journalism Review

The importance of independent media in the age of AI slop and algorithms. – The Verge  

Journalists may see AI as a threat to the industry, but they’re using it anyway - Harvard’s Nieman Lab  

Investigating a Possible Scammer in Journalism’s AI Era – The Local

Mapping news creators and influencers in social and video networks - Reuters Institute

The Creator Journalism Trust and Credibility Toolkit: A guide for funders - The Lenfest Institute

10 ways I use AI to be a better journalist - Fast Company

How publishers can defend themselves against AI bots stealing journalistic content – The Fix

25 Recent Articles about AI & Journalism

Will AI Replace Journalists Or Test Their Integrity? What MIT Researcher Said - NDTV

Inside Reuters’ agentic AI video experiment – Digiday

A.I. Sweeps Through Newsrooms, but Is It a Journalist or a Tool? – New York Times

X Is Using AI Fact-Checkers – Columbia Journalism Review

Trust Networks as Antidote to AI Slop - Pawel Brodzinski

Largest study of its kind shows AI assistants misrepresent news content 45% of the time – regardless of language or territory – BBC

‘Existential crisis’: how Google’s shift to AI has upended the online news model – The Guardian

New ChatGPT writing guidelines at Axel Springer-owned Business Insider - Status

How AI will upend the news – Semafor

Can the news industry stop AI theft? It might be a long shot. – Washington Post

Wired and Business Insider remove ‘AI-written’ freelance articles – Press Gazette 

I Tested How Well AI Tools Work for Journalism - Columbia Journalism Review

What's behind the TikTok accounts using AI-generated versions of real Latino journalists? – NBC News  

The first copyright challenge by a major Japanese news publisher against an AI company. - Harvard’s Nieman Lab

Inside the quiet takeover of local journalism by AI - Fast Company

Newsrooms tap AI experts - Axios

What is AI reading? Takeaways from a report on AI brand visibility – MuckRack 

Politico’s recent AI experiments shouldn’t be subject to newsroom editorial standards, its editors testify – Harvard’s Nieman Lab

Parkland Shooting Victim Recreated as AI for Jim Acosta Interview. – The Guardian

If AI Won't Follow the Rules, Should the Media Even Try? – Fast Company  

AI presents challenges to journalism — but also opportunities - The Harvard Gazette  

Most journalists use AI; few newsrooms have policies – Editor & Publisher

AI-generated news sites spout viral slop from forgotten URLs – Harvard’s Nieman Lab

Prompting tips for journalists using AI image generators – JournalismUK

Major Study Finds Many Mistakes in AI-Generated News Summaries – TV Tech

25 Recent Articles about AI & Journalism

Traffic Apocalypse  Google’s AI Overviews are killing click-throughs to news sites. – Columbia Journalism Review

How journalists can spot and mitigate AI bias - Reuters

What Tools Can Newsrooms Use to Evaluate Generative AI Prompts? – Generative AI Newsroom

Amazon to Pay New York Times at Least $20 Million a Year in AI Deal - Wall Street Journal 

Meta Exec Joins BBC News For Key Artificial Intelligence Role- Deadline 

What Legacy Newsrooms Can Learn from Social Media Creators – Nieman Reports  

iOS 26 beta 4 arrives, with Liquid Glass tweaks and AI news summaries – Tech Crunch 

What news sources AI chat bots read – Axios

Beyond the Hype: What AI Can and Can’t Do for Journalism – What’s New in Publishing 

The struggle over AI in journalism is escalating – Blood in the Machine

How Google AI Overviews is fuelling zero-click searches for top publishers – Press Gazette

Argentina’s President Joins A.I.-Fueled Smear Campaign Against Journalist – New York Times  

ChatGPT referrals to news sites are growing, but not enough to offset search declines - Tech Crunch 

The Media's Pivot to AI Is Not Real and Not Going to Work – 404 Media

Law360 mandates reporters use AI “bias” detection on all stories - Nieman Lab 

AI, Search and the Future of News Once again, distinctiveness is the best defense – Second Rough Draft 

News Sites Are Getting Crushed by Google’s New AI Tools – Wall Street Journal  

A new tool lets your favorite AI model talk with 2 million articles from The Guardian - Nieman Lab

The Newspaper That Hired ChatGPT – The Atlantic  

AI is giving local news a second chance. Will it be ready this time? – Poynter 

Journalist says 4,000 fake AI news websites created to game Google algorithms – Press Gazette 

AI is polluting truth in journalism. Here’s how to disrupt the misinformation feedback loop. – Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Politico's Owner Is Embarrassing Its Journalists With Garbled AI Slop – Futurism

Generative AI models love to cite Reuters and Axios, study finds - Nieman Lab

When AI Gives an Answer, No One Cares About the Source: News outlets get left out when AI turns a search engine into an answer engine. – US News

TV channel launches Germany's first completely AI-generated news programme - NotebookCheck.net

AI Citing News Outlets

"AI responses to fact-based queries and prompts are more likely to cite news outlets. The outlets most cited include Reuters, the Financial Times, Time, Axios, Forbes and the Associated Press. In this new GEO [generative engine optimization] world, recent content or news stories are what's driving the answers. LinkedIn, Reddit and Glassdoor — places where user-generated content and reviews can be found — can also influence an LLM's response." -Axios

An Example of Using AI in Journalism

CalMatters is using AI to track all of the committee hearings in the California state legislature. Not only are they using AI to monitor things that they could never have enough people to do manually, but they’ve created a website where I, as a user, can go and search any topic I’m interested in, and AI will find the conversation that was had in the state legislature about that topic and pull those transcripts for me. It’s an impressive tool. -Poynter

24 Recent Articles about AI & Journalism

Three newsrooms on generating AI summaries for news - Harvard’s Nieman Lab

More than 2 years after ChatGPT, newsrooms still struggle with AI’s shortcomings – CNN

Think AI is bad for journalism? This story might change your mind: Letter from the Editor -  Cleveland.com 

The New York Times has reached an AI licensing deal with Amazon – New York Times  

How this year’s Pulitzer awardees used AI in their reporting – Harvard’s Nieman Lab 

ChatGPT referral traffic to publishers’ sites has nearly doubled this year – Digiday

Politico’s Newsroom Is Starting a Legal Battle With Management Over AI – Wired  

Chicago Sun-Times Prints AI-Generated Summer Reading List With Books That Don't Exist – 404 Media

A New Report Takes On the Future of News and Search: AI’s impact on platforms and publishers - Columbia Journalism Review   

Gannett Is Using AI to Pump Brainrot Gambling Content Into Newspapers Across the Country – Futurism

Americans largely foresee AI having negative effects on news, journalists – Pew Research Center  

A startup is using AI to summarize local city council meetings – Columbia Journalism Review   

Have journalists skipped the ethics conversation when it comes to using AI? – The Conversation

Tomorrow’s Publisher, a site about the future of news, is “powered by” an AI startup - Harvard’s Nieman Lab  

Why some journalists are embracing AI after all - IBM

Musk's xAI "will pay Telegram $300 million to deploy its Grok chatbot on the messaging app. – Reuters

AI learns how vision and sound are connected, without human intervention – MIT  

Teaching journalism students generative AI: why I switched to an “AI diary” this semester – Online Journalism Blog  

Patch’s big AI newsletter experiment - Harvard’s Nieman Lab 

Study Guide Supremacy Getting my news from ChatGPT - Columbia Journalism Review   

Journalism is facing its crisis moment with AI. It might not be a bad thing. – Poynter

AI-Generated Content in Journalism: The Rise of Automated Reporting - TRENDS Research & Advisory

AI-Generated Fake Book List Seems Funny, but Reflects the Technology’s Danger to Journalism – Pen America

Politico’s Newsroom Is Starting a Legal Battle With Management Over AI – Wired  

Journalists are using AI. They should be talking to their audience about it. – Poynter

18 Recent Articles about AI & Journalism

21 Recent Articles about Journalism & AI: Uses, Ethics, & Dangers

Yahoo News debuted a fresh A.I.-powered news app – Wired

Ten big questions on AI and the news – Columbia Journalism Review  

It Looked Like a Reliable News Site. It Was an A.I. Chop Shop. – New York Times

NYT issues guidance on its A.I. principles – InPublishing

AI companies freeze out partisan media – Semafor

AI newsroom guidelines look very similar, says a researcher who studied them. He thinks this is bad news - Reuters Institute  

WSJ editor Emma Tucker on how publishers can protect themselves from AI challenge – Press Gazettte

For the first time, two Pulitzer winners disclosed using AI in their reporting – Harvard’s Nieman Lab

AI for Data Journalism: demonstrating what we can do with this stuff right now – Simon Willison

The media bosses fighting back against AI — and the ones cutting deals – Washington Post

A national network of local news sites is publishing AI-written articles under fake bylines. Experts are raising alarm - CNN

What does the public in six countries think of generative AI in news? | Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism - Reuters Institute  

USA Today is adding AI-generated summaries to the top of its articles - The Verge  

Google’s and Microsoft’s AI Chatbots Refuse to Say Who Won the 2020 US Election – Wired

Julia Angwin on trust in journalism and the future of AI and the news – Journalist’s Resources

AI’s coming inverted pyramid moment for journalism – Poynter

Does AI Have a Place in Journalism? 6 Ways It Helps Us Craft Our Original Work – PC Magazine

Why TikTok star Sophia Smith Galer created an AI tool to help journalists make viral videos – Journalism.co  

Newsrooms are experimenting with generative AI, warts and all – The Conversation

Media Companies Are Making a Huge Mistake With AI – The Atlantic

‘Devastating’ potential impact of Google AI Overviews on publisher visibility revealed - Press Gazette

23 Articles about Journalism & AI: Uses, Ethics, & Dangers

66% of leaders wouldn't hire someone without AI skills, report finds - ZDnet

Meet AdVon, the AI-Powered Content Monster Infecting the Media Industry – Futurism

New AI and Large Language Model Tools for Journalists: What to Know - Global Investigative Journalism Network

AI is disrupting the local news industry. Will it unlock growth or be an existential threat? – Poynter

How Generative AI Is Helping Fact-Checkers Flag Election Disinformation, But Is Less Useful in the Global South – Global Investigative Journalism Network

AI-generated news is here from SF-based Hoodline. What will that mean? -San Francisco Chronicle

News industry divides over AI content rights - Axios 

8 major newspapers join legal backlash against OpenAI, Microsoft – Washington Post

The business of news in the AI economy – Wiley Online Journal

Nearly 70% of newsroom staffers are using A.I. in some capacity, leveraging the technology to generate headlines, edit stories, and perform other tasks – Poynter  

How AI-generated disinformation might impact this year’s elections and how journalists should report on it – Reuters Institute  

AI is already reshaping newsrooms, AP study finds - Poynter 

AI news that’s fit to print: The New York Times’ editorial AI director on the current state of AI-powered journalism – Harvard’s Nieman Lab

Watermarks are Just One of Many Tools Needed for Effective Use of AI in News – Innovating  

We’re not ready for a major shift in visual journalism - Poynter 

Axios Sees A.I. Coming, and Shifts Its Strategy – New York Times 

Newsweek is making generative AI a fixture in its newsroom - Harvard’s Nieman Lab 

Your newsroom needs an AI ethics policy. Start here. – Poynter

Is AI about to kill what’s left of journalism? – Financial Times

Pulitzer’s AI Spotlight Series will train 1,000 journalists on AI accountability reporting – Harvard’s Nieman Lab

AI newsroom guidelines look very similar, says a researcher who studied them. He thinks this is bad news – Reuter’s Institute 

AI’s Most Pressing Ethics Problem – Columbia Journalism Institute

Impact of AI on Local News Models – Local News Initiative

Preparing Media Students for their AI Future

When I was teaching at a journalism school some 15 years ago, many professors were wringing their hands about digital media. “Would print survive?” they wanted to know. The focus was on their past rather than the students’ future. By asking the wrong questions, they were leading themselves into irrelevance and their students unprepared.

Here we are again, only this time it is generative AI. Much of what’s called AI is mislabeled or overrated, but it doesn’t matter. Media students will need help understanding how to use it effectively and ethically. Employers will be expecting it from them. The students also need an idea as to where AI is inadequate—this will inform them as to which parts of the media process they will need to do themselves.

There is no way to do this without having a clear understanding of the goal: understanding what separates “great” writing/audio/video from “good” writing/audio/. They have always needed to be able to evaluate their own writing to get better. And now, they must be able to evaluate what the AI produces for them.

The advent of digital platforms changed the process and tools of journalism and media. The goal remained the same. Likewise, generative AI will impact the process but not the ultimate goal.

Stephen Goforth

13 things journalists need to know about AI

A good rule of thumb is to start from the assumption that any story you hear about using AI in real-world settings is, beneath everything else, a story about labor automation.  Max Read’s blog 

This new era requires that newsrooms develop new, clear standards for how journalists will — and won’t — use AI for reporting, writing and disseminating the news. Newsrooms need to act quickly but deliberatively to create these standards and to make them easily accessible to their audiences. Poynter

Any assistance provided to these (AI) companies (by news organizations) could ultimately help put journalists out of business, and the risk remains that, once the media’s utility to the world of AI has been exhausted, the funding tap will quickly be turned off. Media executives can argue that having a seat at the table is better than not having one, but it might just make it easier for big tech to eat their lunch. Columbia Journalism Review 

Google is testing a product that uses artificial intelligence technology to produce news stories, pitching it to news organizations including The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal’s owner, News Corp, according to three people familiar with the matter. New York Times

“Reporters tend to just pick whatever the (AI) author or the model producer has said,” Abeba Birhane, an AI researcher and senior fellow at the Mozilla Foundation, said. “They just end up becoming a PR machine themselves for those tools.” Jonathan Stray, a senior scientist at the Berkeley Center for Human-Compatible AI and former AP editor, said, “Find the people who are actually using it or trying to use it to do their work and cover that story, because there are real people trying to get real things done.” Columbia Journalism Review

Journalists’ greatest value will be in asking good questions and judging the quality of the answers, not writing up the results. Wall Street Journal 

There are 49 supposed news sites that NewsGuard, an organization tracking misinformation, has identified as “almost entirely written by artificial intelligence software.” The Guardian

Recently, AI developers have claimed their models perform well not only on a single task but in a variety of situations … In the absence of any real-world validation, journalists should not believe the company’s claims. Columbia Journalism Review

If media outlets truly wanted to learn about the power of AI in newsrooms, they could test tools internally with journalists before publishing. Instead, they’re skipping to the potential for profit. The Verge

One of the main ways to combat misinformation is to make it clearer where a piece of content was generated and what happened to it along the way. The Adobe-led Content Authenticity Initiative aims to help image creators do this. Microsoft announced earlier this year that it will add metadata to all content created with its generative AI tools. Google, meanwhile, plans to share more details on the images catalogued in its search engine. Axios 

In the newsroom, some media companies have already tried to implement generative AI to create content that is easily automated, such as newsletters and real estate reports. The tech news media CNET started quietly publishing articles explaining financial topics using “‘automated technology’ – a stylistic euphemism for AI,” CNET had to issue corrections on 41 of the 77 stories after uncovering errors despite the articles being reviewed by humans prior to publication. Some of the errors came down to basic math. It’s mistakes such as these that make many journalists wary of using AI tools beyond simple transcription or programming a script. Columbia Journalism Review

OpenAI and the Associated Press are announcing a landmark deal for ChatGPT to license the news organization's archives. Axios

AI in The Newsroom (video) International News Media Association International  

16 Journalism & AI quotes & tools

Beginner’s prompt handbook: ChatGPT for local news publishers - Joe Amditis

How to cover AI – a guide for journalists - The Fix 

Good journalism, in my view, is original and reveals previously unknown or hidden truths. Language models work by predicting the most likely next word in a sequence, based on existing text they’ve been trained on. So they cannot ultimately produce or uncover anything truly new or unexpected in their current form. Harvard’s Nieman Lab 

Machine learning can be deployed to help newsrooms identify and address biases that crop up in their own reporting, across text, photo, video, audio, and social media. The Fix 

A close examination of the work produced by CNET's AI makes it seem less like a sophisticated text generator and more like an automated plagiarism machine, casually pumping out pilfered work that would get a human journalist fired. Futurism 

It matters that the technology can fool regular people into believing there is intelligence or sentience behind it, and we should be writing about the risks and guardrails being built in that context. Harvard’s Nieman Lab 

Non-writing AI tools every journalist should know about. International Center for Journalists 

The "world's first" entirely AI-generated news site is here. It's called NewsGPT, and it seems like an absolutely horrible idea. Futurism

Artificial intelligence tools are now being used to populate so-called content farms, referring to low-quality websites around the world that churn out vast amounts of clickbait articles to optimize advertising revenue, NewsGuard found. NewsGuard

The Artifact news app lets AI rewrite a headline for you if you come across (a clickbait) article. TechCrunch

One area where MidJourney is helpful is food journalism. Need an image of a breakfast bowl with whole grain and blueberries? Just write a prompt. MidJourney is also excellent building basic templates for object cutaway diagrams. Mike Reilley’s Journalism Toolbox

With tools like ChatGPT in the hands of practically anybody with an internet connection, we're likely to see a lot more journalists having their names attached to completely made-up sources, a troubling side-effect of tech that has an unnerving tendency to falsify sourcing. Futurism

What if an AI could attend, take notes and write short, hallucination-free stories about public meetings? Harvard’s Nieman Lab

Can you design an AI system that attends a city meeting and generates a story? Yeah, I did it. This tech could soon — very soon — be a viable tool to save reporters time by covering hours-long public meetings. The technology could also lead to layoffs in some newsrooms. Harvard’s Nieman Lab

The publisher of Sports Illustrated and other outlets is using artificial intelligence to help produce articles and pitch journalists potential topics to follow. Wall Street Journal 

The owners of Sports Illustrated and Men’s Journal promised to be virtuous with AI. Then they bungled their very first ai story — and issued huge corrections when we caught them. Futurism

Local TV and Radio News Survey 2022

Takeaways from The Radio Television Digital News Association’s annual survey of local TV and radio:

Programming

  • A new record of 1,116 TV stations aired local news—up 18 from last year’s all-time high.

Budgets

  • Just 16.3% of TV stations report budget increases while 29.3% report experiencing budget cuts.

  • Among TV news directors who do know their department’s profitability, 75.9% report a profit.

  • The percentage of radio news managers reporting their budgets decreased doubled to 18.2% over the previous year.

Salaries

  • Despite pandemic-related pay cuts, local television news salaries, on average, increased by 3.5%, or 2.1% after accounting for inflation.

  • TV salaries in markets 101-150 faired the best, with salaries for most positions increasing while in the top 25 markets, salaries for most positions fell.

  • Average and median starting TV news salaries both rose during 2021 to the highest staring salaries in the survey’s history.

Staffing

  • Full-time newsroom staffing fell 6.3% in 2021.

  • Digital staffing, on average, was up slightly, along with the roles of photographer, producer, editor and social media producer/editor.

  • Three times as many commercial radio news departments cut staff as added. Public radio stations, on the other hand, were four times more likely than commercial stations to grow.

Solo Journalists

  • The average newsroom has fewer solo journalists than last year while smaller markets overwhelmingly rely on MMJs, and mid-markets increasingly do, but few stations large market stations send reporters out alone.

  • MMJs and producers remain most in demand, representing about three-quarters of new TV news hires.

Innovations

  • More local TV newsrooms report producing virtual town halls, specials and longer-form or digital-exclusive content.

Social Media

  • Facebook is the most popular social media platform for local TV and radio news, with 94% of radio newsrooms and 100% of TV newsrooms reporting they used it.

  • Instagram is used by nearly every TV station and a third of radio newsrooms.

  • Twitter use among local news has been declining for several years, with most TV newsrooms using the platform, but less frequently.

Podcasts

  • The typical station, measured by median, has no podcasts and the average per station is less than one half.

  • The typical radio news department reporting zero podcasts.

Danger

  • 1 in 5 television news directors reported attacks on employees.

  • More than half of attacks occurred during coverage of civil unrest, protests, marches/rallies or riots

The Full Report