The Real AI Revolution : Practical Tools for Modern Newsrooms
This year’s IQ MEDIA Conference, held on April 14–15, 2025, in Athens, Greece, gathered journalists, academics, research scientists, and media leaders from across the globe to explore how artificial intelligence is reshaping the future of journalism.
Among the standout speakers was Professor Jonathan Soma from Columbia Journalism School, whose presentation — titled “How AI is Transforming Data Journalism and How Newsrooms Can Unlock Its Full Potential” — offered practical insights into how even the smallest newsrooms can integrate AI tools into their workflows, no programming experience required.
As Soma emphasized throughout the talk, AI is no longer a luxury reserved for tech giants or elite investigative teams. With the right tools and mindset, AI becomes a newsroom sidekick — one that can summarize hours of audio, organize decades of reporting, translate content instantly, and even analyze satellite imagery, all without a single line of code. The key, he argued, is knowing where AI fits in your process — and where it doesn’t.
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⚡ The “Old Days” vs. Today: A Major Leap Remember how The New York Times spent enormous time and money digitizing their old recipe archive? It involved manual work, complicated technology, and enough mathematical jargon to make your head spin. Professor Soma pointed out that today, similar results could be achieved with just **15 lines of code** (for those who code!) or even by dragging a visual into a tool like GPT and asking it to reformat. That’s a big shift! What once took years and millions of dollars can now be done in a fraction of the time.
💪 Small Newsrooms, Big Impact: AI to the Rescue Running a local newsroom with a small team? Professor Soma gets it. Trying to cover every neighborhood in a city as big as New York? Exhausting! But don’t worry — you can now upload all your past stories into an AI tool and ask it to analyze which neighborhoods you’ve covered. Voilà! A coverage map in seconds. Need to understand articles written in Japanese or French? AI can summarize and extract key insights without the need for a multilingual team.
👏 No More Tedious Tasks: Let AI Handle the Boring Stuff Let’s be honest — transcribing city council meetings isn’t every journalist’s dream. But guess what? AI is stepping in! Whether you’re writing a few lines of code or using user-friendly software like Easy Whisper or Mac Whisper, you can get transcripts and summaries from long meetings in minutes. Imagine the time saved!
💡 Beyond Text: AI Sees, Too! Remember those super technical satellite image analysis projects? Detecting illegal mining once took hours of technical work. Now? You can simply upload an image to a webpage and ask it to “show all the cars” or “count the pools.” It works like magic. Even The New York Times used AI to scan satellite imagery for bomb craters — no technical expertise required. The key takeaway? Knowing what’s possible is your new superpower.
🧭 The Golden Rule: Don’t Chase the Hype — Solve Real Problems Professor Soma gives a valuable piece of advice: don’t fall for the AI hype. Instead, think about the most boring, repetitive parts of your job. That’s where AI can be your best friend. The goal is to match AI to real problems — not invent problems just to use AI.
🤔 Be Cautious: Not All AI is Created Equal Be wary of claims that AI will revolutionize everything overnight. Newsrooms have unique needs and often tight budgets. New York City’s chatbot that accidentally advised businesses to break the law is a funny (but telling) example of what can go wrong when AI isn’t thoughtfully applied. And let’s be honest — does someone who’s already read every Washington Post climate article really want to ask a chatbot about it? Stay skeptical and always test rigorously.
🏆 People Power (and Universities!) to the Rescue: Open Source Wins Here’s the hopeful part: the rise of open-source AI tools and models, thanks to platforms like Hugging Face. Think of it as the YouTube of AI — packed with free tools for everything from transcription to document analysis. Partnering with universities can also be a fantastic way to develop custom, often free AI solutions for your newsroom. Openly- built, local solutions are almost always the best ones.
🛑 Chatbots: Proceed With Caution (Unless It’s About Food) Professor Soma isn’t a fan of chatbots for journalism — mainly because they tend to “hallucinate.” Unless the stakes are very low (like asking **Chowbot** in San Francisco for restaurant recs), take chatbot answers with a grain of salt.
📢 Boosting Tips With AI? Smart Idea A clever tip Professor Soma mentioned: using AI to help manage incoming news tips. Instead of users having to read long instructions on how to submit the perfect pitch, an AI could scan their first message and follow up with helpful, clarifying questions. That saves time and leads to better stories.
👀 Don’t Panic, Just Observe (and Learn!) Feeling overwhelmed? Don’t stress! You don’t have to be the first to jump on every AI trend. If you have fewer resources, it’s perfectly okay to watch what works for others and adopt those strategies later.
⭐ Useful Tools You Can Actually Use (No Billion-Dollar Budget Required!): Professor Soma mentions several accessible AI tools that newsrooms can use without requiring extensive coding knowledge or significant budgets: – **Mac Whisper and Easy Whisper:** Great for transcribing audio and video, especially for meetings and interviews. Mac Whisper works locally for a one-time $25 purchase, with no data sent to the cloud. – **Google Pinpoint:** A free tool for searching large document collections, transcribing audio, and extracting information in different languages. – **Claw for Sheets & AI in Google Sheets:** Powerful for turning unstructured data (like survey responses or tips) into structured, analyzable formats. – **Notebook LM (by Google):** Useful for extracting information from large documents, especially for low-risk tasks like finding specific details across multiple PDFs. Just remember to double-check the output.
🌍 The Future Is Now (and Surprisingly Normal) In the end, AI in the newsroom is becoming like a search engine — just another tool. It’s not magic; it’s a piece of efficient technology that can help journalists focus on what they do best: telling important stories. So instead of fearing the AI revolution, let’s welcome it as a helpful teammate in our daily work!
✍️ Feyza Karakus (Student at the University of Athens)
📸 Franck Fernandes (Nice-Matin)
