How artificial intelligence is, and isn’t, used in local newsrooms

As AI tools become commonplace, newsrooms in New Hampshire and elsewhere are looking at ways artificial intelligence can bolster their reporting.

At the same time, they’re approaching the technology cautiously and setting out clear guardrails — such as ensuring that AI will not be used to generate articles or photos.

Many journalists around the country (including this one) now use AI tools such as Otter to transcribe interviews, a major time savings. Some outlets have also used AI to monitor public meetings they can’t cover in person, which can help them identify story ideas or sources.

But there have also been some high-profile cautionary tales from mixing journalism and AI.

Earlier this year, for instance, the Chicago Sun-Times and Philadelphia Inquirer published a summer reading list with books that didn’t exist; the freelancer behind it admitted to using generative AI and not fact-checking the results.

“If you use AI, you have to have a human in the loop,” said Jonathan Van Fleet, editor of the Concord Monitor. In other words: AI can help journalists work more efficiently, but it can’t do their reporting, writing, editing or fact-checking for them.

Here’s how two New Hampshire newsrooms are thinking about AI.

At The Laconia Daily Sun, editor Julie Hirshan Hart says there aren’t any formal policies on AI yet, but it’s an ongoing conversation.

One thing that’s a clear line: The Daily Sun won’t use generative AI to write articles, she said.

“There's no copy-paste,” she said. “You know, you can't send something through an AI generator, not read it, put it in your story and keep going.”

Journalists have used AI to help brainstorm headlines and photo captions, she said. Hirshan Hart’s also thought about whether it could help automate some rote tasks, such as formatting police logs.

But AI will never be a substitute for human journalists, she said.

“I see it as a tool that you can use in your brainstorming process or in your writing process, but it should not replace, as a journalist, your news judgment or your experience or your particular voice,” she said.

Similarly, the Concord Monitor is using AI tools in ways that bolster the work journalists are already doing.

Van Fleet said they’ve used AI to suggest URLs that will do better in search results. It can also take voluminous public records that are released as PDFs and quickly convert them to searchable word documents.

“We're using the tool to help us do what we do faster and more efficiently,” he said. “But what we're not doing is saying, ‘Cover this meeting for us.’”

As AI content becomes more prevalent, Van Fleet said readers are going to wonder what they can trust — and it’s important that news outlets be transparent about how they are and aren’t using AI. The Monitor has published its AI policy on its website for that reason.

The policy says staff members are required to communicate clearly about any use of AI during the reporting, writing or editing process, and any information generated by AI must be vetted by a reporter or editor before publication.

“AI tools enable us to work more efficiently by suggesting headlines, helping to summarize stories and organizing public information — but they are not a replacement for human judgment, reporting or editing,” the policy states.

Van Fleet said that last point is key.

“We are not generating fake articles,” he said. “We are not having a robot cover the news of your community. You are going to interact with a human being. You're going to speak with a reporter, and you're going to be quoted accurately, and if you have questions about that story, you can talk to a human being about it.”

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This story is part of Know Your News — a Granite State News Collaborative and the New England Newspaper and Press Association's Press Freedom Committee initiative on why the First Amendment, press freedom, and local news matter. Don’t just read this. Share it with one person who doesn’t usually follow local news — that’s how we make an impact. More at laconiadailysun.com/knowyournews.