Mediahuis trials use of AI agents to carry out ‘first-line’ news reporting

Belgium-based news publisher Mediahuis is experimenting with automating the production of its “first-line” news.

Under an experimental project AI agents are involved in the writing, fact checking, legal checking and editing of news stories under the plan but a human would always check the finished product before it is published.

The proposal is to allow the 2,000 journalists at Mediahuis to concentrate on producing its “signature journalism”, the publisher’s head of AI strategy Ana Jakimovska told the FT Strategies News in the Digital Age event in London on Wednesday.

Mediahuis publishes around 25 titles in Belgium (De Standaard), the Netherlands (De Telegraaf), Ireland (Irish Independent and Belfast Telegraph), Luxembourg (Luxemburger Wort) and Germany (Aachener Zeitung).

[From 2023: How Mediahuis is easing generative AI into its newsrooms]

Jakimovska said: “We’re really, really big on signature journalism, on talking to people, knocking on doors, interviewing, understanding our communities’ deep connection with the communities that we serve. But we also acknowledge that there’s a need for first line news.

“So one of the experiments… is looking at what level we can automate first line news so that we can unlock a big chunk of that potential of the 2,000 journalists that Mediahuis has to work on high level journalism, on our identity.”

Mediahuis is building a “huge database” of key sources including Parliaments, wire agencies, think tanks, companies and political leaders on social media.

Specific examples of potential international and Belgian sources included agencies AFP, Reuters and Belga, non-profit consumer protection organisation Testaankoop, Oxfam, research university KU Leuven, public service broadcaster VRT, Flemish Parliament, the European Commission, and Belgian prime minister Bart De Wever and Flemish Vooruit party chairman Conner Rousseau on social media.

Jakimovska said they are “orchestrating a set of very simple agents” starting with commissioning agents that understand each brand, which will be fed this data and tasked with deciding what news stories would be relevant to its audience – and what has “public value”.

A writing agent would then write the story, a multimedia agent will find the right visual assets, it will be checked by a legal agent, and a fact-checking agent will also take a look and “spit out any worrying things”.

Jakimovska said a monitoring agent will then “monitor the discourse around this particular story. When the polarisation becomes high, or when there’s different opinions, it triggers an opinion skeleton to send to an editor to say ‘this might be a really interesting thing to cover for a [piece of] signature journalism’.”

Finally a human will review the story and hit publish.

[Read more: How newspaper giant Mediahuis aims to reach 70% digital revenue by 2030]

“We are seeing very encouraging results on this,” Jakimovska said. “Now, I have to say kudos to Mediahuis and all the editors-in-chief. When I presented this, I thought there was going to be a huge backlash, but actually it was incredibly visionary, where they said ‘we need the best journalism to do their best work, and for us, the signature journalism is our best work’. 

“This could be one of the things that fundamentally and structurally is likely to change the newsroom.”

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