In the second episode of this two-part series from Mx3 AI, a new pop-up conference we collaborated on with Media Makers Meet, we look at why, how and when publishers are integrating AI into their newsrooms.
AI is not a pie-in-the-sky dream for media companies: it hasn’t been for years. For close to a decade questions about whether AI will replace or empower journalists have been raised at conferences and in newsrooms.
Over the past few years the conversation has changed. It is now no longer a question of ‘if’ AI will be integrated throughout the newsroom, but ‘when’.
In December, Media Voices collaborated with Media Makers Meet on their Mx3 AI conference in London. The speakers – drawn from across the media industry from recruitment to newsroom – confirmed that AI is already suffusing the industry. But where they offered invaluable insight was around ensuring it is used effectively and with consideration for the business goals and employees of publishers.
As the official report from the event notes: “A key theme throughout… was the need for publishers to act immediately and start experimenting with AI, albeit with clear business goals at front of mind.”
At the event itself, a number of speakers elaborated on how they bake business considerations into their implementation of AI right from the start. FT Strategies’ senior consultant Sam Gould, explained how they used design sprints and an experimental approach to identifying business opportunities for publishers, for example. He noted:
“Step one was about identifying a business problem or business opportunity. There needs to be some element of reality… So we encourage publishers to think through lenses [of] business innovation, is there something you could do differently?”
FT Strategies’ manager Aliya Itzkowitz noted the vast array of use cases which such encouragement might lead publishers to identify. She said: “We [worked with] one organisation, a news agency. They received lots of inbound emails about news events, things that are happening nationally. And their focus for the day was, ‘Can I come up with a way to automatically route these emails to the correct people within my team?’. So quite a specific use case to them.”
She also noted, however, that the lion’s share of publishers’ interest in Generative AI was related to content. Many publishers are seeking to use AI to reformat copy to make it more accessible to different cohorts of readers.
Report back
John Barnes is chief digital officer at B2B information publisher William Reed. In his session he discussed the ethos behind the company’s ‘Waddle In’ team, which is an opt-in and informal group of individuals interested in AI within the business.
“[We thought] let’s get a team around this concept of AI and how it might impact the business model. It’s not about being an expert or not, it’s about having an interesting point of view, and perspective,” he said.
But AI is an extremely broad catch-all term for a vast array of different functions. Beyond that, the tech itself is complex to understand and often intimidating to get to grips with. As a result Barnes advocated for an open reporting process within the business. He explains how the Waddle In team feeds back to the wider organisation, to prevent any confusion: “
“We summarise the conversations each month and push it out to business, [we] find people like to read certain things in there. People were worried and excited in equal measure. Basically people were worried about ‘would it replace my job? How are we going to use it? How are we not going to use it?’”
That need to reassure employees was also highlighted by Roxanne Fisher, director of digital content strategy at Immediate Media. She explained that by bringing journalists into the experimental space around AI by providing them with guidelines, it allows them a safe environment in which to get to grips with AI in the newsroom.
“When we’ve spoken to people, what they appreciated most about the journey we’ve been taking on this year is having the permission to experiment,” Fisher said. “But we also have given them guidelines to help them use it safely and carefully so they can move forward and not only develop skills for the company, but for themselves to be able to use AI and be at the forefront of what’s going on”.
She also points out that by doing so, the journalists don’t just benefit themselves, but they “know that they are doing it in a way that isn’t going to damage the reputation of the brands that we all love”.
Buy-in and business
One of the hardest parts of integrating any new tools within a newsroom is getting buy-in at board level. Whether it’s off-the-shelf tech or proprietary, there are monetary and time costs for implementing them into existing tech stacks and workflow.
Lucky Gunasekara is co-founder and CEO at Miso, which develops AI tools. He explained that demonstrating ROI on AI tech is vital for getting buy-in: “I think AI needs to put more money into the newsroom than it takes out. Otherwise, it’s just a nice experiment. It’s actually not sustainable, and it will eventually get cut, or something else will get cut in service of it, which is probably even worse.
“So being able to apply AI in ways that actually drive more reader engagement, drive more revenue, improve and strengthen or even upgrade the underlying business model” is what is required to bed AI into newsrooms.
The practicalities around demonstrating that ROI are still being determined. Publishers stand to gain from the use of their own data in training language models, for instance, which should help ease the pain for getting buy-in. Charlie Beckett is a journalist and researcher at the London School of Economics. He says: “There is a there is a huge upside for publishers from getting this right. And creating a licensing model that works for developers, that potentially adds a new revenue stream. We all know that we need multiple revenue streams to create sustainable business models. This is potentially a new one.”
The prize for integrating AI into newsrooms effectively is great. But as the panellists and presenters at MX3 AI explained, media companies cannot and should not barrel in without a plan. It requires reassurance across the business, the implementation of reporting processes to measure effectiveness, and a team dedicated to keeping an eye on all aspects of AI for the newsroom.
This episode is the second of a two-part series from Mx3 AI. The first, looking at opportunities, regulation and risks around AI, can be found below or by searching for ‘Media Voices’ on your podcast app of choice.
There is also a corresponding report from the event, written by Media Makers Meet, available to download here.
Media Voices and Media Makers Meet would like to thank FT Strategies, InsurAds, Labrador CMS, Miso, Sub(x) and Zuora for sponsoring the conference.
