{"id":16149,"date":"2026-04-25T01:16:24","date_gmt":"2026-04-25T01:16:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/16149\/"},"modified":"2026-04-25T01:16:24","modified_gmt":"2026-04-25T01:16:24","slug":"why-cant-newsroom-leaders-just-be-normal-about-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/16149\/","title":{"rendered":"Why can’t newsroom leaders just be normal about AI?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m more optimistic about generative artificial intelligence in journalism<\/a> than most of my peers. So it pains me to see AI rollouts that are short-sighted \u2014 or even offensive \u2014 threaten the fragile truce between reporters and the technology.<\/p>\n

Newsroom leaders can\u2019t seem to be normal when it comes to AI experiments.<\/p>\n

Take the latest dustups at the Cleveland Plain Dealer. The ideas: Use generative AI to write up reporters\u2019 notes to reach more coverage areas, and in a weird escalation, create vertical videos featuring a talking building and avatars of reporters and editors<\/a> to reach new audiences.<\/p>\n

Or at McClatchy, where a new \u201ccontent scaling agent\u201d repackages articles in new ways for different audiences (think summaries for newsletters.) As that was announced, reporters realized they may not control whether their bylines appear on AI content. And as The Wrap reports<\/a>, executives were dismissive:\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIf they don\u2019t have the ability in their contract to remove their byline, we\u2019re going to use their name. Now, I\u2019m not asking y\u2019all to get in fist fights with all of them, but in the cases where we have to, they get to decide. If they decide not to, again, they don\u2019t get credit. They don\u2019t. We\u2019re going to do it anyway, but they\u2019re not going to get credit for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the age of liquid content<\/a>, leaders at these companies were on the right track in thinking about amplifying existing work in new ways. But the execution was atrocious, and has led to more distrust of the technology \u2014 and its promoters (like me) \u2014 at a time when we will truly fall behind if we\u2019re not using it.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s Nota News. The company launched 11 hyperlocal news sites in September 2025, each covering a county identified as a news desert. The mission \u2014 bilingual civic reporting for underserved communities \u2014 was exactly the kind of thing this industry needs. But Poynter found more than 70 stories lifted from at least 29 local outlets and 53 journalists<\/a>, run through AI tools and published under Nota editors\u2019 bylines.<\/p>\n

All 11 sites shut down by early April. A company that said it wanted to save local news was leeching off the local journalists still doing the work.<\/p>\n

Again and again: Decent idea, horrible execution.<\/p>\n

These failures are the result of leaders who skipped the boring, hard, necessary work of bringing their organizations along on AI initiatives. Here\u2019s what that work looks like.<\/p>\n

Solve a real problem, and explain why <\/p>\n

Simply creating more content for the hell of it is like putting a new steering wheel on a Geo Metro. If your AI experiment doesn\u2019t start with a clear problem that your audience or your newsroom actually has, no amount of technology will save it.<\/p>\n

Actually talk to your audience \"\"<\/p>\n

A composite shows AI generated images from Cleveland.com and reader comments in the middle. (Composite by Poynter staff).<\/p>\n

\u201cWELCOME BACK, JOSH.\u201d \u201cJOSH IS BACK.\u201d \u201cHey Josh, welcome back. Tell (Cleveland.com) to stop using AI.\u201d<\/p>\n

These are comments on the latest video from Cleveland.com<\/a> social media producer Josh Duke. People appear to be rejoicing to see a human return to the newsroom\u2019s social feeds. The AI videos were roundly rejected across platforms, indicating that the audience wasn\u2019t considered when planning their AI experiment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t dismiss your skeptics \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Ryan Struyk, director of AI innovation at CNN, said this at a recent conference: \u201cSkeptics who come around often become your most productive advocates, because they\u2019ve genuinely thought through the concerns.\u201d<\/p>\n

Be overly transparent <\/p>\n

I know that you\u2019re damned if you do, and damned if you don\u2019t when it comes to talking about generative artificial intelligence. Audiences want to know if you\u2019re using AI, but research shows they trust you less when you tell them<\/a> \u2014 something that has likely gotten worse as the backlash to the technology grows.<\/p>\n

But, if McClatchy leaders had publicly discussed the \u201ccontent scaling agent\u201d and explained to readers exactly what it was and why they\u2019re using it, they wouldn\u2019t be facing external backlash to complement what reporters internally are saying. Disclosure is essential.<\/a><\/p>\n

Be ready to answer tough questions\u00a0 <\/p>\n

\u201cWe are journalists. That\u2019s how we think. If you\u2019re not ready, we will eat you and your cool new thing alive,\u201d said Kristen Hare, Poynter faculty and director of craft and local news.<\/p>\n

This is an industry that\u2019s justifiably skeptical of big promises from tech companies<\/p>\n

Get internal buy-in before rolling out AI initiatives <\/p>\n

From Sitara Nieves, Poynter vice president of teaching and organizational strategy: \u201cIf you don\u2019t invest the time to talk to all parts of the organization before announcing a tool that changes how people work, you\u2019ll spend even more time later cleaning up the fallout. That\u2019s much less fun (also not very productive).<\/p>\n

Launching new AI policies requires listening first. Host skip-level meetings to hear concerns from every corner of the organization and treat that feedback as data. Be transparent about which concerns you can address and which are non-negotiable. You\u2019ll also learn who on staff might help you advocate for change and champion it. Ultimately, your teams need to feel that change is being implemented with them, rather than to them.<\/p>\n

Great, ethical journalism includes showing your work. The same is true for launching new AI tools.\u201d<\/p>\n

Be normal <\/p>\n

McClatchy leaders created a scrolling Star Wars-esque video highlighting staff who worked on their AI tool. It gave each of them joke titles, which inexplicably referenced the Matrix (a different movie.)<\/p>\n

\u201cI once had a CEO play Coldplay\u2019s \u2018Something Just Like This\u2019 when rolling out a new tool,\u201d said Mel Grau, Poynter director of program management. \u201cIt was so cringe.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I\u2019m more optimistic about generative artificial intelligence in journalism than most of my peers. So it pains me…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16150,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,6154,25,11836,11837,6156,2454],"class_list":{"0":"post-16149","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ai","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-ai-and-journalism","10":"tag-artificial-intelligence","11":"tag-cleveland-plain-dealer","12":"tag-mcclatchy","13":"tag-nota-news","14":"tag-video"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16149\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}