School hosts panel of industry experts that exploring how AI is shaping journalistic work
On April 6, 2022, School of Journalism associate professor Nicole Blanchett hosted “Bots, analytics and other tech-tricks: How AI is impacting journalism,” a panel of industry experts that explored how artificial intelligence is shaping journalistic work, including the benefits and ethical challenges of using tech to report and promote news stories.
The panel included Sonali Verma from The Globe and Mail, Lucas Timmons from Torstar, Prasanna Rajagopalan from CBC and Katie Kutsko from the American Press Institute.
Verma is the director of business development of The Globe and Mail’s Sophi.io, an artificial intelligence and machine-learning platform that helps publishers build sustainable revenue models by using automation, prediction and optimization technology.
During the panel, she said The Globe’s AI uses a personalized approach that treats each reader differently based on the content they look at. It’s also used to determine how much promotion some of their content should receive, as well as how much revenue they would make from paywalls in comparison to ad revenue.
Verma doesn’t see AI as a substitute for humans. She said there are areas of journalism that editors and reporters do very well, such as going out and finding good stories, telling them in a sensitive and empathetic way, and making sure that their reporting is ethical and fair. "In other words, things that require a great deal of human judgment and which we do not believe machines can do well,” she said.
She added that the top three articles on The Globe’s site are always placed there by editors. “We believe we set the agenda for the national conversation in Canada,” Verma said. “Editors do have the power to override the machine whenever they believe it's important.”
Timmons is a news automation developer with Torstar. He writes software to find, clean and automatically process data into written narrative stories. Before that, he was the head of the Digital Data Desk and did automation and interactive graphics at the Canadian Press.
During the panel, Timmons said he sees the use of data as a way to build trust with your audience. “You can provide them with information they’ve never had before,” he said in the panel. “You can add value to data and people will trust you and the brand that you work for.”
He said that news organizations should use this sort of technology ethically and keep their mission to aid their audience and journalists in mind, rather than focusing on ways to get as much money that they can.
Rajagopalan is the director of journalism and programming at CBC Toronto, where he oversees its local presence in the Greater Toronto Area. Prior to that, he worked on CBC News’ digital strategy and products, where he developed best practices, experiments and new data-driven approaches to maximize the impact of CBC’s journalism.
During the panel, he said CBC is using AI to deepen their engagement with their users and audience. "We really want our journalists to focus on the storytelling and getting to the heart of the matter,” he said. “We want to maintain principles that we hold really dear, such as transparency, being fair to our users, and giving choice to our users, and at the same time making it easier for our internal users, which are our journalists."
Kutsko is the education and strategy manager for the American Press Institute’s Metrics for News program, along with its source diversity tracking tool Source Matters. She trains newsrooms on analytics skills and how to solve problems using audience data.
She said that Source Matters uses AI to help identify live sources in stories to let journalists know whose voices are being over or underrepresented in their news coverage.
While Kutsko said she thinks the use of AI can be democratic and inclusive, it can also be manipulated just like any other data. "I think democratizing the data across news organizations and access to understanding how people engage with your websites and content that you're producing – that can create more inclusive and better journalism,” she said. “Our entire purpose is to create more inclusive journalism.”
All of the panelists agreed that student journalists should strongly consider adding data and programming to their skillset if possible, as there are multiple opportunities for people combining editorial and AI.