AI isn’t the threat anymore. Avoiding it is.

The industry is already using AI to sharpen headlines, spot SEO trends, moderate commenting, and draft news quizzes. Next year, the shift will accelerate: reporters and editors won’t just be allowed to toy with AI — they’ll be expected to rely on it to enhance reporting and editing.

By 2026, AI will no longer be optional. The workflows we’ve relied on for decades aren’t fast enough, efficient enough or scalable enough to compete with what AI is already doing, which is uncomfortable for us to say aloud: It’s far smarter than we thought it would be at this stage. It’s quick, often witty and sometimes insightful. It still can’t fully replace reporting and it still makes factual mistakes — but that’s not the point. It’s already good enough for the average reader and an increasingly valuable tool for journalists. That alone is enough to force every newsroom to rethink how journalism works.

I predict that next year, newsroom leaders will do more than encourage AI use for data projects, audience initiatives and story summaries. They will begin expecting more reporters to use it for story structure, framing, and sentence construction. Some will even use AI to generate early reporting questions or identify new angles. Imagine a local reporter walking into a city council meeting with a list — produced with AI — of context, conflicts, and follow-up questions for lawmakers. Or an editor using AI to reframe a muddled draft into a coherent structure.

By the end of 2026, we will see at least one major newsroom openly experimenting with AI-assisted reporting and editing workflows.

This is not the time for us to hide from the future. We need to embrace the possibilities of AI to enhance our storytelling efforts and reach new audiences. The danger isn’t AI replacing journalists — it’s AI replacing the public-information structures that ground American democracy.

We must establish stronger, transparent systems and practices surrounding AI to ensure our survival. National newsrooms must lead this work and support local outlets, which have fewer resources and often deeper community trust.

Every newsroom must establish clear policies defining what AI is allowed to do — and what remains off-limits. Furthermore, to protect sources and uphold journalistic standards, newsrooms should begin building their own generative and agentic AI tools rather than relying on external platforms that are profit driven and could soon be subject to government oversight, if Congress decides to regulate this new technology that threatens our collective futures. We must innovate just as quickly as this technology is changing the world.

Without decisive action, we risk hemorrhaging our most ambitious talent to tech companies that pay better. AI won’t kill journalism — but our refusal to fully integrate it responsibly into our newsrooms will.