Making AI work for journalists and news audiences

In February, ONA announced the new AI in Journalism Initiative, a program aimed at supporting journalists and newsrooms as they navigate the rapidly evolving landscape of artificial intelligence. We’ve had a busy first four months with practical training sessions, meetups for practitioners implementing AI in their work, and thought leadership sessions designed to move the conversation forward.

Feedback from the community has been overwhelmingly enthusiastic, with many people attending with colleagues, offering to host discussions and suggesting more topics to explore together. We’re excited to share how it’s going so far and where we’ll be focusing next.

Who is getting involved

We’ve been thrilled to welcome so many participants from the ONA community in the program. More than 1,150 people have signed up to attend at least one session in our practical training series diving into use cases for AI in newsrooms, and 613 people have attended at least one session to date, with many attending more than one. Plus, more than 230 ONA members have joined the AI Innovator Collaborative, a group that gathers monthly to discuss best practices and share lessons learned.

It’s important to us that AI training and learning is accessible to organizations and roles of all kinds. We’ve had participants of all ages and career stages, ranging from reporters and editors to business leaders and CEOs. And they’ve come from organizations like NBC, The New York Times and the BBC, as well as local outlets like Epicenter NYC, Spotlight PA and Outlier. Many more are freelancers and independent producers, or students or educators.

What we’re learning

We’ve asked participants in the program to rate their own proficiency in using AI tools, and their organization’s, on a scale of 0-5. So far, participants rate their own proficiency as an average of 2.5, and their organizations’ slightly lower at 1.9.

Many people in our community feel like the only one in their newsroom who is thinking about the opportunities with these technologies.

“I’m excited to be in a virtual room with so many other people eager to find and share ways to make AI work for us and our audiences,” wrote one attendee.

“Learning how other media outlets are approaching AI in the newsroom, what tools they are using, and how they are working towards safeguarding and transparency has been incredibly helpful as our [organization] works on similar issues,” wrote another.

That camaraderie and motivation to lead the way is exactly what we want people to experience through this initiative.

Next opportunities

We hope to see you at one of our upcoming sessions. Here’s what to look out for:

• Getting visual: We kicked off a mini series on AI, photojournalism and image generation May 30 with a discussion of what journalists need to know around ethics, copyright issues and how newsroom leadership should be preparing. Next, we’ll have a practical training on how the image creation tools work June 18 and an experimental Mini Lab session to try them out July 10. And our AI Innovator Collaborative will discuss visual journalism at our meeting on July 9.
• Cultivating trust: We’ll hear from Lynn Walsh of Trusting News on June 14, with a session on how to talk about your newsroom’s AI policy with your audience to build trust. Over the following several weeks, ONA will partner with Trusting News on a project to test out audience messaging and develop some best practices with a cohort of newsrooms, and we’ll report back on what we learned together in the fall. If you are interested in being part of the newsroom cohort testing audience outreach, learn more and apply with Trusting News.
• Doing more with AI: Other upcoming virtual practical trainings will cover AI and audio, teaching AI in the classroom or student newsroom and AI applications for data journalism. ONA members can enroll in these sessions for free, and registration is $25 for nonmembers. See the whole schedule and sign up.
• Play sessions: Join us for a Mini Lab, 45-minute sessions where you can experiment and practice using AI tools with peers and an expert trainer in real time. Mini Lab sessions are free for all to attend. Learn more about the format and see all the upcoming sessions.
• In-person programming: We have a number of amazing sessions in the works covering AI at ONA24, our annual conference happening Sept. 18-21 in Atlanta. See the conference sessions and speakers confirmed so far, with even more to be announced in the coming weeks.

How to get involved

• Suggest a session, a speaker you’d love to hear from or a topic you’d like to see covered. Email program lead Meghan Murphy with your idea at meghan@journalists.org.
• Start a conversation, share a case study or ask a question in the ONA Slack community’s #artificial-intelligence channel. If you’re not already involved in the ONA Slack, join now.
• If you’d like to talk about supporting ONA’s AI programming, contact Hanaa Rifaey, Head of Strategic Partnerships, at hanaa@journalists.org.

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