Will local newsrooms get left behind by the AI revolution?

With the rise of generative AI, news outlets have been scrambling to figure out how to adapt to the changing technological landscape, placing media organizations into two camps. 



The first camp, which includes the likes of The New York Times Company, is opting to pursue legal action against AI companies such as OpenAI. The newspaper’s parent company accused the Microsoft-backed startup of copyright infringement in December, asserting that millions of its articles were used to train the company’s chatbots. 



The second, which includes such companies as Axel Springer, the Financial Times , and the Associated Press, sees the rise of AI as inevitable and are taking the money while it’s here by signing deals with the AI companies, according to Alex Mahadevan, director of MediaWise at the Poynter Institute. 



Such deals ensure that AI-generated information used from articles produced by the outlets links back to the original source, rather than the information being left uncited. Additionally, the articles are said to receive a “favorable position” in ChatGPT search results.



But as huge news organizations strike deals, experts have expressed concerns about what these arrangements could mean for smaller newsrooms that are already struggling and may not be in a position to broker favorable partnerships.



In a survey of more than 300 leaders in digital news, the Reuters Institute found that 35% of the respondents expected most money from these deals would go to big media companies. 



“[AI companies] do not need everybody, but they do need these bigger newsrooms,” Nic Newman, senior research associate at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, tells Fast Company . “The danger with this is that the small companies will get nothing.”



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As an industry, local news is already suffering from digital decimation, Newman notes, with “news deserts” popping up all over the United States. According to the latest annual study conducted by Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, more than half of U.S. counties have no access or very limited access to local news. 



Deals between AI companies and large newsrooms could further this divide as they leave local newsrooms with their information uncited and unprotected from scraping—which smaller newsrooms are even more vulnerable to as many do not have paywalls, Mahadevan says. 



For its part, OpenAI partnered with the American Journalism Project in 2023 in a $5 million agreement that is being used to explore how AI can support local news. 



However, Mahadevan says, he would be curious to see how much local newsrooms are getting from this partnership since it was not made directly with individual newsrooms. The deal also focuses on incorporating AI to innovate day-to-day operations and does not explicitly work to protect content.



OpenAI did not respond to a request to comment on this article.



Benefits of AI for Local News 



While AI poses a threat to local publications that may be last on the list for licensing deals, the technology could also help level the playing field in content creation, as local newsrooms are often underfunded. 



Many AI platforms such as ChatGPT provide some free access along with their paid offerings and can be used to do things such as transcribe audio, structure pieces, and summarize long documents. These tools can be useful if a newsroom is understaffed, as they can allow for the delegation of administrative tasks, giving journalists more time to report.  



Local news outlets are now realizing that they can either cover their community with help from this technology or they will soon be unable to cover their community because they do not have the resources, says Jeremy Gilbert, Knight chair in digital media strategy at Northwestern University.



“Generative AI can be helpful in the same way the desktop computer can be helpful,” says Gilbert. “While it is not a replacement for human-written stories, it can be a way to ensure a minimum level of quality.”



Mark Caro, editor of Medill's Local News Initiative, draws parallels to the dawn of the internet, which also unleashed rapid technological changes onto the news business. While it hurt news business models, he says it made some aspects of reporting much easier, such as the ability to search records.



The concern, however, is the threat of the technology replacing human reporting, according to Caro. 



What about misinformation and trust?



Search-powered large language models could give people enough information about their local news that they no longer need to go to local news sources, Gilbert says. 



And while AI is speeding up the process of writing articles, it also could pave the way for misinformation to spread more quickly. This could lead to the further erosion of trust in reporters, which would threaten the values that the news industry is founded on. 



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Trust in the news media is already low , with half of U.S. adults under 30 saying they trust information from social media sites as much as information from national news outlets, according to a 2022 study by the Pew Research Center.



According to a Gallup poll , just 7% of Americans have a “great deal” of trust and confidence in the media.



Luckily, the ability for AI to report is not a possibility yet as generative AI is currently making it harder for people to find the information they are looking for rather than completely replacing sources, Gilbert says. 



He says that the rise of low-quality information generated by AI is causing people to seek out credible journalism by turning to brands they know they can trust, which could be good for the profession. 



Newsrooms in 2030



As AI continues to advance, Mahadevan says he sees two paths for the future of news. 



The first rather grim outlook is that local news dies out and everyone turns to ChatGPT for information. 



The other way things could go, he says, is that newsrooms use these AI tools to enhance their work by using the tools to summarize reports, transcribe audio, and help generate stories based on lengthy reports.



One of the best-case scenarios, Caro says, is that AI doesn't just help reporters with their work, but it also will help newsrooms reprioritize how to run a better newsroom today. Instead of running a newsroom like it was in the 1990s, AI could help journalists envision and create a newsroom for the 2030s. 



This shift may involve tailoring news consumption to fit people’s personal preferences, such as favored medium and type of content. 



“This technology could help [newsrooms] meet [audiences] where they are . . . what you know about a subject, what reading level you are at, and how you like to consume it,” Gilbert says.



What’s next



Looking forward, Mahadevan advises that every journalist try to become an expert in AI, as it intersects with every beat, anything from entertainment to real estate. 



“The more we can do solid reporting on AI, the more we can hold these companies accountable for their actions,” says Mahadevan.



He encourages reporters, especially local ones, to experiment with AI to see what works for them.



“Local reporting is expensive,” Gilbert says. “If there are ways to make it more efficient, it is important and necessary.” 



As news deserts spread and more larger newsrooms ink AI-focused content deals, implementing this technology on an individual level in newsrooms is likely to become even more essential for the health of local newsrooms—and the country. 



“If local news dies, so does our democracy,” says Newman.