Newsroom Robots

• Gina Chua: Where Journalism’s Value Lives When AI Tells the Story

  In this live episode, host Nikita Roy sits down with Gina Chua, Executive Editor of Semafor, recorded at an event at New York University hosted in collaboration with the AI networking group, Humans in the Loop. Gina brings a uniquely expansive lens to the AI conversation, grounded in her leadership across global newsrooms—from Reuters and The Wall Street Journal to the South China Morning Post. Now at Semafor, she continues to be a leading voice rethinking the information ecosystem for an AI-driven world.In this wide-ranging and candid conversation, Gina explores how generative AI is reshaping the fundamental architecture of journalism—from editorial workflows and business models to the core definition of a story. She discusses her team’s experiments with building custom AI tools like Miso, a multilingual aggregation system powering Semafor’s Signals format. Key topics include:How Semafor is using AI for multilingual search, editorial summarization, and style guide enforcement built directly into Google Suite workflows using App Scripts and Claude.The challenges of building durable AI products in newsrooms including unstable models, integration hurdles, and evolving use cases.Rethinking the role of journalists in an AI world: where value lies in asking the right questions, building audience understanding, and creating narratives only humans can shape.The importance of reframing journalism’s mission not as saving “journalists” or “journalism,” but as delivering information in the public interest.Behind-the-scenes on JESS (Journalist Expert Safety Support), a chatbot Gina prototyped and co-developed to democratize access to field safety guidance for reporters worldwide.Why the future of news depends on tight, authentic relationships with audiences and how startups like Semafor are designing for trust, voice, and community from the ground up.The episode closes with reflections on Gina’s personal coding journey with AI including her work building an assistive tool for a friend with ALS.Sign up for the Newsroom Robots newsletter for episode insights and updates from host Nikita Roy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Zach Seward: How a Five-Person AI Team Is Powering Innovation at The New York Times

  In this live episode, host Nikita Roy sits down with Zach Seward, Editorial Director of AI Initiatives at The New York Times, recorded at the ONA x Newsroom Robots AI Leadership Summit in Detroit. With a background that spans journalism, product, and executive leadership, Zach brings a rare blend of newsroom insight and entrepreneurial thinking to the challenges of this AI era. Before joining the Times, he co-founded Quartz, where he served as editor-in-chief, CEO, and chief product officer, helping to pioneer digital-native journalism.Now at The Times, he’s built a new editorial AI team from the ground up, experimenting with tooling, guiding newsroom adoption, and thinking through what comes next in how journalism is produced, distributed, and consumed.Key topics include:How the Times is using AI to support investigations, including analyzing hundreds of hours of leaked video and massive public data sets using custom LLM workflows.Echo, the in-house summarization tool that’s helping reporters transform articles, headlines, and tags across a range of newsroom needs.Lessons from building a five-person AI team inside a 2,000-person newsroom and why newsroom trust and individual agency are central to successful adoption.Why Zach’s team sees itself as an “AI enablement” group and how their newsroom-wide roadshow has sparked experimentation.The role of AI in reader experiences, from improving internal search to exploring voice interfaces that reimagine how audiences interact with journalism.What it means to build durable, future-ready news products in a media environment increasingly shaped by AI distribution and personalization systems.Sign up for the Newsroom Robots newsletter for episode summaries and insights from host Nikita Roy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Cheryl Phillips: How AI Is Uncovering Hidden Stories in Local Government

  When officials in Santa Clara County (home to Silicon Valley) publicly proclaimed they were not sharing data with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, they likely did not expect to be caught in a contradiction. Yet behind the scenes, those same officials had recently signed new contracts with the federal agency — a fact that might have remained hidden if not for a new generation of AI tools developed at Stanford University.This breakthrough was made possible by Big Local News, a Stanford-based initiative using AI to help local journalists uncover stories hidden deep within public records. As local newsrooms grapple with shrinking resources and overwhelming amounts of data, tools like these are helping restore investigative capacity where it’s needed most.In this episode of Newsroom Robots, Cheryl Phillips, founder and co-director of Big Local News at Stanford University, joins host Nikita Roy to share how her team is building AI-powered tools that support watchdog journalism and make complex data more accessible to reporters across the country.Key topics include:Agenda Watch, a tool that scrapes and indexes public meeting agendas to surface early signals of newsworthy developments across thousands of local agencies.DataTalk, an AI assistant that turns natural language questions into campaign finance data queries, simplifying analysis for journalists without coding expertise.The use of generative AI and large-scale scraping systems to analyze police misconduct records and create public-facing accountability databases.How Big Local News uses Slack-integrated bots to deliver real-time alerts on layoffs and problematic fiscal audits to local newsrooms across the U.S.Sign up for the Newsroom Robots newsletter for episode summaries and insights from host Nikita Roy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Kasper Lindskow: Building a Scalable AI Infrastructure at Denmark's JP/Politikens Media Group

  When it comes to AI adoption, experimentation is easy—scaling is hard. So, what is the difference between AI projects that fade out and those that transform newsrooms? A strong infrastructure.In this episode of Newsroom Robots, Kasper Lindskow, the head of AI at JP/Politikens Media Group joins host Nikita Roy. Kasper shares how as one of Denmark's largest media groups they are building a scalable AI infrastructure across multiple news brands, balancing technical innovation with editorial values.Key topics include:The Platform Intelligence in News (PIN) Project — their comprehensive research initiative that brought together technical universities and social science departmentsMagna — their flagship AI suite that adapts to each publication's unique voice and offers tools from basic writing assistance to complex research capabilitiesHow JP/Politikens evolved from a single-newsroom AI team to a centralized unit with "local AI hubs" at each publicationThe "Values Compass" framework that ensures AI systems align with journalistic integrityHow they customized AI tools for different publications and integrated them into daily newsroom workflowsSign up for the Newsroom Robots newsletter for episode summaries and insights from host Nikita Roy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• Rune Ytreberg and Lars Adrian Giske: How iTromsø is Building an AI-Ready Foundation for News

  Imagine a newsroom where AI agents assist with reporting, actively surface leads, analyze government data, and help journalists navigate complex investigations in real time. Norway’s iTromsø is laying the groundwork for exactly that.In the second part of this episode with Rune Ytreberg, head of data journalism at iTromsø, and Lars Adrian Giske, head of AI join host Nikita Roy to share how their small but ambitious newsroom is systematically building an infrastructure for AI-powered journalism. This isn’t just about isolated tools—it’s about creating a cohesive ecosystem where AI enhances reporting at every level.Rather than simply bolting AI onto existing workflows, iTromsø is focused on building a structured data infrastructure that supports AI agents across multiple newsroom functions.Their vision includes:A centralized AI-powered data interface that allows journalists to filter, analyze, and cross-reference government records, public documents, and municipal archives.Automated news alerts that notify reporters when AI detects important patterns or anomalies in the data.A structured repository of historical data, ensuring journalists have context-rich information at their fingertips, allowing for deeper investigative work.This structured approach isn’t just about efficiency—it’s about creating a foundation where AI can play an active role in surfacing critical stories.iTromsø is designing an AI-ready newsroom—one where structured data, automated insights, and AI-assisted research come together to elevate investigative journalism.Sign up for the Newsroom Robots newsletter for episode summaries and insights from host Nikita Roy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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