The group was primarily drawn from Code for Africa’s broad network, which was built through targeted mapping, continent-wide surveys and the MediaData database. In addition, snowball sampling was employed during the survey, which means that interviewees played an active role in defining who to include, and some participants may come from outside Code for Africa’s network. Among this set of South African indie info providers interviewed, we learned that:

Acknowledgments

Thank you to Code for Africa and Liz Kelly Nelson for input throughout this process; Nechama Brodie and Sarah Chiumbu for their thoughtful feedback on this report; Jonathon Berlin and Kurt Cunningham for web and graphic design; Grace Nuri for support with transcription and data processing; and Greta Alquist for editing this report. This project was made possible by the financial support of the Lenfest Institute and a second anonymous donor. We thank all the creators who participated in this report.

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Through multiple sources of information, including audience feedback and engagement data, interviewees have a clear sense of who they reach.

For the most part, South African interviewees obtain information about their audiences through a combination of analytics, content performance and feedback they receive. Based on analytics, most interviewees can speak confidently about audience location, age, gender and sometimes race. Many interviewees also articulated a clear sense of their audience’s interests, such as politics or lifestyle, but distribution platforms don’t typically provide this kind of data. Instead, consistent patterns in content performance can be illuminating. For example, several interviewees who create consumer-facing info said that reviews of budget products and “anything that punches above its weight” perform best, suggesting they can reach an “aspirational” audience on a fairly tight budget. If they work primarily in English, they are confident that their South African audience is middle-class or wealthier. Unsolicited audience feedback provides a third source of insight into their most dedicated audiences. For example, if most messages come from Black women, they assume most of the audience fits that profile. For one interviewee, brand outreach gives them insight into their audience.

Freelancing can also provide valuable secondhand knowledge about audiences. While not all interviewees can afford focus groups or other forms of audience research, some do have a clear sense of who they reach through larger publications. Those who regularly collaborate with or publish in other outlets answered questions about their audience with reference to these larger outlets. For example, one respondent described a regional outlet they partner with as reaching “policy makers, they reach people in government, conservation, business. They really are a heavy-hitting title. They’re read widely in South Africa and across the continent.”

South African indie info providers generally see audience feedback as generative.

Many interviewees described their audiences as a valuable source of ideas and inspiration. This may be in the form of direct requests for coverage or donations of multimedia content. For example, an interviewee with a satirical brand regularly incorporates audience-generated punchlines and memes into their show. However, it’s more common for audiences to inspire news stories less directly, such as with audience questions. As a hyperlocal info provider explained:

They expanded a new shop and we just did a video of it. There was no article even. The whole week I was fielding questions. They’re like, ‘Hey, so do you guys have a halal section?’ I’m like, ‘That’s not my shop. Please go look.’ But then we did discover people want to know which shops have halal sections. We should probably do that. So, that’s kind of how we do it. ‘Is it open after 9?’ And I’m like, ‘I don’t know. I never asked them because I don’t even live in that area.’ But it did make me go, ‘Okay, I’ve got to do a story on stores that are open late if you’re working.’” 

Informal communication and in-person events are also opportunities to get a better sense of audience interests and questions that may eventually translate into content. A few interviewees actively seek out this kind of feedback through audience surveys with mixed success. Some receive almost no feedback this way, while others said surveys work best when they conduct them infrequently, albeit regularly.

Interviewees noted that the volume and tone of online communication with their audience can become overwhelming, but they view “showing up” as a core aspect of credibility.

Several interviewees had to develop strict boundaries to respond to “toxic” or “rabid and horrible and abusive” interactions online. One person had been the victim of a mass reporting campaign on social media, which left them cautious about sharing too much personal information. Two others set strict limits on what they answer and how much time they spend on it. This is necessary for their mental health and well-being:

It’s really important when you’re working in algorithmically charged online environments to get outside and just remember that most people are still normal and don’t behave like they’re on TikTok all the time.”

All the same, South African interviewees put a lot of emphasis on “showing up.” For many, their work and credibility is fundamentally relationship-based, and it isn’t possible to build and maintain those relationships without being accessible. One interviewee described finding value in events where “you get to speak to the people and you tell them, ‘Look here, this work that we are doing is not funded by the government’ … [which] adds a bit more of a real authenticity to the work that we do.” Other forms of showing up include in-person conversation, especially around sensitive topics, or answering every email and DM they receive, often at length. As one interviewee said, “It’s not a situation where I can establish credibility from on high … so it was always going to be about getting on the ground with people and getting into the nuance and the details.” Showing up may be particularly important in the context of unequal power relationships, like one interviewee who makes a standard practice of bringing reporting back to the affected communities. As they explained, “you have to not just pay lip service to a more ethical way of being but actually also do it” to maintain credibility in marginalized communities, especially as an outsider.

Interviewees also aim to build audience trust through traditional journalistic authority — especially through a rigorous process of sourcing, verification and fact-checking.

Interviewees frequently cited traditional journalistic practices and ethics as a way to build credibility. By far the most common practices cited were rigor in sourcing and verification, among both former journalists and those with no journalism experience. If they make mistakes, interviewees said, audiences will find someone else who does a better job. In many cases, that means not just fact-checking but sharing exactly which sources they use. As one interviewee explained it, the alternative is “risking publishing something that may or may not be true. Do you want to risk your reputation on something like that?” While the details of sourcing and verification practices were outside the scope of interviews, it is clear that interviewees prioritize rigor and fact-checking and view it as a way to build credibility with their audience, whether they are doing original reporting or curating content from other sources.

This type of rigor is clearly important in South Africa, where some interviewees see the country as “uniquely vulnerable to fake news and bot-led disinformation networks.” Although South Africa has an established and functioning free press, the country, like others in the region and beyond, has been inundated with online disinformation campaigns from domestic and international actors, increasing concerns about information integrity.

From the interviewees’ point of view, financial and editorial independence, including transparency about funding, are another key facet of traditional journalistic ethics. These are particularly important to interviewees who cover commercial enterprises. As one of them said, “[covered businesses] cannot own us and they cannot buy us.” This person described a no-exceptions advertising and corrections policy, which they instituted to indicate a strong stance against financial or legal pressure. Another interviewee avoids collaboration because “I was stung a few times by folks who had a real political agenda and would try and use me to reinforce their political agenda.” Working alone makes it possible to maintain their independence.

Because ethics are so important, at least one interviewee voluntarily opened themself up to external scrutiny. This person chose to register with the South African Press Council so that they are held to the same standards as legacy outlets and can receive official complaints.

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Most interviewees are going it alone, with too many roles and too few hours.

Our interviewees tend to work alone — and a lot. Some described their work as consuming “every waking thought” or “like, 100 hours” a week, while others manage to contain work to closer to 40 hours. Those who spend less time on their indie info provider projects are often juggling multiple jobs, with a total workload far in excess of a 40-hour week. Interviewees started their indie info provider endeavors as early as 2003 and as late as mid-2025; while early entrepreneurship is intense, it has stayed intense even for those who have been doing it longest.

No matter how many hours a week they work, interviewees reported splitting their time roughly equally between content work (research, interviewing, writing and creating videos), business development (marketing, revenue strategy and audience engagement) and administrative tasks (budgeting, scheduling, taxes and responding to emails). Those who are attempting to scale beyond a solo venture spend somewhat less time on content work than others. On the other hand, indie info providers with a strong reporting focus spend somewhat less time on business development, although they feel guilty about this choice. That said, there is no typical week in this business: interviewees’ focus varies based on immediate needs and news events.

A few interviewees have been able to expand their operation to include a small full-time team, but most have not. Even when indie info providers are able to hire some support, these supporting roles typically cover small and concrete areas of work, such as social media, ad sales or short-term help during much-needed time off.

Indie info providers are exhausted, and the unsustainable physical and mental toll impacts what they can produce and when.

Many of the interviewees feel exhausted and isolated. They’re acutely aware that they care more about their projects than anybody else, and it takes a toll. This also occurs with early entrepreneurs in other industries.

“I burned out like every other month being a one-woman show, so I think it’s just capacity to keep going [that] continues to be a big challenge.” 

“This lives in my head. I am the only person on some level that cares about it, you know, and that is a weird experience.” 

The physical and mental toll impacts their decision-making. Many reported making content choices on the basis of their publishing schedule rather than news value, and turning down other opportunities due to low bandwidth.

Despite the difficulties, interviewees find their work fulfilling and appreciate the editorial and managerial independence.

Every single person we spoke with finds their indie info provider work fulfilling. But are they happy? Just over half said yes, while most of the others highlighted the tension between the fulfilling nature of the work and limited time and financial resources. A few took the question philosophically. “I don’t answer questions like ‘am I happy?’ because I’m not a happy person,” one said. “I’m a bottomless pit of need,” another quipped, while a third mused, “What does ‘happy’ mean? I will be discussing this with my therapist later.”

Almost everyone would choose this path again, given the choice. By far the most common thing interviewees would do differently is think about business earlier: they wish they had “known it was a business,” “charged more,” “thought of it as a career” or “gone in with a business plan.” That is almost certainly specific to former journalists, and much less common among indie info providers from other backgrounds.

Several interviewees would like emotional support and help troubleshooting, and professional relationships with peers fulfill that for some. Interviewees who aren’t former journalists feel less supported.

To address the numerous challenges they face, many interviewees turn to peers who understand these stresses. They have a “group text,” a “sounding board” or even a standing coworking date with other indie info providers. These relationships are valuable for “brainstorming” and “spitballing” even if they are unlikely to lead to formal collaborations. Interviewees also benefit from feedback and skill-sharing within this type of relationship.

Co-production with other creators, even when it is informal, is a strategy to save time. This can look like swapping guest posts, creating something together or interviewing one another reciprocally. Indie info providers enjoy this type of collaboration and said it could be valuable to grow their audience and reach, but they also observed that it has to be genuine. “That’s so important for this ecosystem, for people to cross-promote to support each other when it’s genuinely of interest, not fake, you know, paid cross promotions. Your audience is too small and sensitive and they can tell when you’re doing that,” one person said. Several indie info providers said explicitly that they think about cross-promotion strategically, whether seeking opportunities with larger outlets (or to support smaller ones), reaching out to people on complementary platforms or finding intersections with audiences they want to reach but have not yet.

A few interviewees who are not former journalists find it challenging to develop stronger relationships with other indie info providers. Either they aren’t aware of people working on similar beats, or they do not see a way to collaborate that makes sense for their finances or their schedules. Another interviewee — who said that “being alone” is the hardest part of the job — also finds it difficult to relate to other indie info providers because of extensive experience on the business side of media organizations. ”There’s a phrase, ‘to run a business means to touch reality.’ I think there are a lot of people that work in the media who never touched reality. And touching reality, by the way, sucks.”

Similarly, many former journalists miss the day-to-day support they found working in larger organizations, but realize these jobs may no longer exist.

Former journalists who transitioned from legacy media find themselves missing many functions of a larger newsroom they once took for granted. They no longer have access to editorial oversight or legal review they might have once had, and all decision-making lies with them. When the same person writes, edits and publishes the content, they worry about an accountability gap.

The tasks they handle go far beyond accountability: they have to coordinate their own health insurance, backstop their own time off, sell their own ads and figure out their own legal status as a business. They struggle to juggle — or do without — these tasks, and balance their life with priorities outside of work, like simultaneously holding full- or part-time jobs, raising families or completing a doctoral degree. However, several former journalists noted that the journalism jobs with larger organizations may no longer exist, citing massive layoffs in the industry.

Advanced technology makes it possible to work alone, but most interviewees wish their tools were better integrated into their workflows.

Beyond standard office software like email, word processing and presentation tools, indie info providers rely on a wide range of software tools for managing workflow, research, content production, content distribution, managing finances and automating across these functions.

For technology to save time and effort, the indie info providers need integration between tools and functions. Yet only a few who are particularly tech-savvy described their technology as a “stack” or otherwise said they have achieved this integration. Instead, technology is a broad challenge for many. Knowing programming and coding basics, being able to work with different kinds of products and knowing how to troubleshoot are essential.

While many use AI tools like LLMs for some tasks, they are not a primary resource.

While most of the interviewees use LLM tools at some stage of their process, almost none use them to produce content directly, with many gravitating towards specialized tools instead (see table above). At least eight indie info providers are actively opposed to the use of LLMs for content creation, and some of them avoid LLMs entirely. As one told us bluntly, “I think that people should use their big brains, and you can put that in there.”

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If legacy media idealizes the “view from above,” indie info providers reject it, taking on an “insider-to-insider” tone that starts with shared concerns and priorities.

Many interviewees critiqued the overly impersonal tone of “corporate” or “conglomerate” media and positioned themselves explicitly in contrast to it. Even those with a strong background in legacy media expressed this frustration. One person even described being discouraged from reporting on certain topics because of their personal background while working in legacy media even though their perspective could have been valuable.

Several participants linked the notion of authenticity with an observation that audiences prefer individual voices to institutional ones. “In a creator economy, the brand is you,” one told us. As another observed, “Humans trust humans. They don’t really trust brick walls. And so I try to show up in a very human way.” Strategies include adding occasional personal content or details, being “voicy” rather than relying on a dry institutional style, and spelling out the values and goals behind the reporting. All of these approaches allow indie info providers to distinguish themselves from other media outlets. 

As the editor of a hyperlocal news site said, “We need to show people, ‘Hey, we are your neighbors. We are invested here.’ I am not owned by an out of state or out of country entity. I’m not owned by a billionaire. I’m just somebody who wants to contribute to this town and do a job that helps here.”

For the most part, indie info providers emphasize both authority and authenticity as elements of their credibility.

As the indie info providers described it, authenticity relies on being a community member and a “whole person,” while authority relies on credentials, institutions and professional processes.

Being an insider or community member could be a question of geography: one local news creator observed, “I don’t really see a reason to break down my credentials, degrees, all that stuff if no one is asking for that. And I also feel like it’s kind of elitist. … I was born and raised here. I’m not someone who is just popping up and saying I’m an expert on something about [this city] when I’m not from here. People know me.” It could be a question of professional identity: a B2B creator used this strategy, noting, “A lot of the communication of credibility for me occurs within the context of references and word choice. … It’s much more a performance of authenticity than a traditional media performance of credibility.”

There is no one-size-fits all approach. Several interviewees, including both former journalists and non-journalists, push back against the logic of authenticity entirely. One of them, whose project contains almost no personal content, observed, “I think that playing yourself on social media is exhausting. You reach a point where you’re at your limit. It’s also basically inviting people to scrutinize your personal life and your decisions in a way that, as a journalist, you don’t face nearly as much attention.” Another person hadn’t anticipated “that I would need to be as much of a present face in my community as I am currently” and finds it challenging.

The two most common ways indie info providers signal credibility via authority are by “showing your work,” often by citing or linking sources, and emphasizing their prior experience in journalism or other institutions. 

Both former journalists and non-journalists emphasized showing the work, which makes conclusions traceable. It is also consistent with journalistic practice more broadly. “Everything I do is based on source documents. It’s not based on rumor or innuendo,” one person said. Transparency about funding, ethics policies and other institutional processes are another form of “showing the work” that is consistent with legacy journalism outlets. Former journalists and non-journalists alike highlighted this kind of transparency.

Meanwhile, some interviewees who emphasized their prior experience hoped that credibility would transfer automatically to them. One of these interviewees said that they signal credibility by “having bylines in legitimate news outlets” and another told us, “I post videos on TikTok and I always remind people I’m a journalist who’s been covering [this topic] for 25 years.” This strategy seems dubious given historically low U.S. trust in legacy media. In fact, many of those who rely almost exclusively on secondhand institutional credibility also have a hard time connecting with audiences. 

If anything, our interviews suggest that authenticity is a must-have, while authority may be a value-add.

Indie info providers combine authentic audience engagement with authoritative rigor in communicating facts.

Unlike legacy newsrooms, where audience outreach and reporting are largely separate functions, indie info providers must handle both. In legacy newsrooms, journalists are typically asked to maintain an “impartial” stance in reporting, although they may use social media to attract audiences and engage with them. Typically, dedicated audience teams focus on attracting audiences, soliciting feedback and selecting stories with broad appeal. Indie info providers take on all of these roles themselves, leaving the boundary between audience engagement and reporting more porous than in legacy media. 

They pay attention to audience responses to understand what resonates with them by asking for input or by following comments and interactions. One participant described attending networking events to get inspiration, observing, “If this person who fits the demographics of my audience has this question, then probably a lot of other people do as well.” Interviewees get ideas from direct messages from readers, and several send regular surveys or polls to understand their audiences’ interests and values. All of these ways of soliciting feedback would typically be covered by an audience engagement team in a legacy newsroom, where audience work is considered less central.

In a similar vein, indie info providers are responsive. They reply to emails, comments and DMs on social media. One even gave out their phone number. They attend events, livestreams and webinars, and several have a presence in audience Discord servers. This stands in contrast to many newsrooms where, for decades, reporters were instructed to avoid often-unregulated comment sections — in fact, many news organizations shut down comment sections years ago. Just three out of 26, all former journalists, said they do not engage with their audiences at all. 

These more bidirectional relationships can have a dark side.

Interviewees expressed concerns over parasocial relationships and harassment. As they put it, the flip side of putting yourself and your personality into your work is that the audience feels like they know you. They may be more likely to pay to support your work because they feel a personal connection, but those relationships can be uncomfortable, and some people cross boundaries.

Multiple interviewees have dealt with hateful comments, personal attacks, threats or borderline defamation. One person recommended that would-be indie info providers develop a thick skin because “once you become public-facing, the amount of hate and the amount of personal and professional risk that you’re putting yourself out there by entering the arena is very real.” Others have developed systems to block specific words on their social media feeds and comments.

Deeper audience engagement does not always translate to more information about their audience.

Interviewees varied widely in how well they knew their audiences. Some could provide extensive demographics — often mentioning age range, geography, interests and gender. (All of these variables are included in standard analytics apps like Google Analytics.) On the other hand, fewer could speak confidently about the professions, race and ethnicity or income level of their audiences. In general, those who have an understanding of their audience use specific technology such as audience enrichment tools, sign-up surveys and analytics data.

But not all interviewees had concrete audience data. Some of them could make guesses based on email addresses or could infer their politics based on the tone of the content. Notably, five of the indie info providers who said that their work does not support their lifestyle at all also said they struggle to articulate their niche in terms of a concrete audience and that audience’s shared need. Some characterized their content as aimed at a specific age group or “regular people who like music.”

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While many of the interviewees had taken a structured course of some kind, self-teaching, trial and error and a strong entrepreneurial spirit are critical.

Eleven out of 26 U.S. interviewees said they had taken some sort of structured course relevant to their creator work. All but one took courses in business skills, ranging from accounting and budgeting to more advanced strategy and revenue development. Without exception, the business courses they took were journalism-specific. They turned to Project C, CUNY’s entrepreneurial journalism program, LION Publishers, Tiny News Collective and others. That’s particularly surprising because so many of their business challenges are relevant to new entrepreneurs across disciplines, not just journalism.

Indie info providers also found ways to learn on their own. Self-teaching could mean learning through trial and error, or it could involve accessing free materials online or from a library. Social media, in particular, seems to be a skillset that creators learn by trying things out (although three people took courses on producing vertical video). Most interviewees decide what to post by soliciting audience feedback or monitoring analytics and identifying patterns over time. One person also described their strategy for avoiding trolls and harassment as something they learned primarily through experimentation. They also teach themselves technical skills like website building, basic programming, video editing, ad sales and more.

They mostly learn new skills alongside one another.

Indie info providers turn to their formal and informal networks to learn new skills. They rely on friends, former colleagues and “mentors from all different types of worlds.” Like the structured courses they told us about, the more formal networks they named were similarly journalism-centric: Project C, which manages a Slack community of 200+ creator-journalists, was the only community that more than one interviewee mentioned by name. (That’s likely because we recruited participants in partnership with Project C. Many other communities for indie info providers exist, among them the Evidence Collective, News Creator Corps, Listening Post Collective, CUNY’s Entrepreneurial Journalism Creators Program, LION Publishers, SciCommers and the Tiny News Collective.) 

While indie info providers from journalism backgrounds and those from other backgrounds have complementary skills and growth areas, interviewees tend to learn from people with similar backgrounds. Just one person said they had joined a local small business networking group, which they found immensely valuable for skill development, relationships and finding local advertisers. This person thought their peers would benefit from broadening their networks in this way, especially if they serve a local audience. 

Because so much of their professional learning takes place within networks, many of our interviewees engage in mentorship programs with journalism schools, professional societies or conferences. They all said these were important professional relationships for them, both to stay connected to the field and to pay forward the way they had learned. As one person explained, “I still dedicate a lot of time when people ask me about starting your own business or about being a solo in the newsletter world. Because people did that for me and I have an ethical obligation to share that, especially now that I’ve been doing this a little bit longer.” 

Many available resources that are not journalism-specific have largely gone un-utilized by interviewees due to time, access or awareness.

Most interviewees see themselves as small business owners (see “making money”), yet only one interviewee mentioned participating in a local small business networking group. Nobody mentioned taking advantage of resources or services from the Small Business Administration or from Small Business Development Centers, although they would likely be eligible. It’s hard to know why interviewees didn’t talk about these opportunities, but it is possible they do not have time to take advantage of them, or are not aware that they exist at all. 

The relative insularity of the professional development ecosystem could mean that the indie info providers we interviewed are unaware of relevant opportunities from adjacent fields. For example, the broader creator field has built a great deal of knowledge about monetizing independent work; indie web developers have long focused on building an audience on owned sites rather than depending on platforms; the open-source community has given deep thought to the sustainability of independent projects; and public scholars have deep expertise in research and communication.

This finding suggests that indie info providers would benefit from networking broadly and considering business models and resources outside their original industry.

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Overview

As of September 2024, about one in five people in the United States get news from individuals rather than organizations. This trend is even more common among younger people. 

There is a growing mix of networks supporting what CNTI refers to in this report as “indie info providers” in the U.S. alone. To name just a few, Project C, our recruitment partner for this report, primarily serves former journalists building independent ventures; the Tiny News Collective brings together community members trying to meet their own community’s information needs; News Creator Corps trains creators from non-journalism backgrounds in media literacy; Listening Post Collective supports communities and community info providers; and the Evidence Collective supports health and science communicators with deep professional expertise. Many indie info providers are engaged with more than one of these organizations, emphasizing how diverse their professional backgrounds are — which makes it difficult to generalize about them.

CNTI sought to better understand this active arena of indie info providers playing increasingly important roles in people’s daily lives. What are their backgrounds, motivations, relationships with their audiences, revenue streams and strategies and their sense of their role in the broader news information landscape?  

To offer a starting point, CNTI conducted a series of in-depth 60- to 90-minute interviews with a mix of U.S. indie info providers, defined as “people who are working to provide verified factual information with a personality- or voice-driven brand that leverages the creator economy.” The group was drawn from within Project C’s broad network, with an emphasis on hearing from science communicators, subject-matter experts and civic-minded community members in addition to the largely journalistic base. (We have also conducted a similar set of interviews with these types of providers in South Africa, which we look forward to reporting on soon.) 

Among this set of U.S. indie info providers interviewed, we learned that they are: 

“[If I could do it all over again], maybe I could have thought [out] the roll-out in a little bit of a smarter way to try to beef up my subscribers before I started … maybe done a teaser campaign or been more shameless about promoting myself.“

Acknowledgments

CNTI thanks Liz Kelly Nelson for input throughout this process; Amy Kovac-Ashley, Celeste LeCompte, Afrooz Mosallaei and Ben Werdmuller for their thoughtful feedback on this report; Jonathon Berlin and Kurt Cunningham for web and graphic design; Grace Nuri for logistical support and additional feedback; Angelica Ruzanova for support with transcription and data processing; and Greta Alquist for editing this report. This project was made possible by the financial support of the Lenfest Institute and a second anonymous donor. We thank all the creators who participated in this report.

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We’re navigating a fundamental shift in how people consume and verify reality. The modern crisis of trust stems from an architecture that has outpaced our collective ability to process information. While we have built technologies that prioritize frictionless delivery, we now have the opportunity to serve as the engineers of the systems that make truth possible. We’re currently in the midst of the most significant opportunity in the history of news: the chance to fundamentally redesign how we deliver value to a global, digitally-native audience.

The doomsday narrative only persists if we remain tethered to legacy distribution models and organizational structures. If we embrace our roles as architects of a new information ecosystem, the outlook is remarkably optimistic.

The Solution: Multi-Disciplinary Synthesis

Journalism requires a radical departure from the siloed newsrooms of the decade prior. Success in our current environment demands a synthesis of editorial excellence, product rigor, audience intelligence, and innovation strategy – this means embracing healthy risk-taking, rapid experimentation, succinct cycles of iteration, and most importantly…failure. This integrated approach served as the “secret sauce” for organizational resilience. Now it’s just table stakes.

At the News Product Alliance (NPA), we see that the most successful newsrooms treat product as a core strategic discipline. These organizations move past the old friction between the newsroom and the business office, embracing a model where product thinking scales editorial values. The data support this shift toward radical optimism: the 2025 NPA Census highlights that newsrooms prioritizing this synthesis report significantly higher audience retention and revenue diversification. You (the journalists and researchers in this community) are the leaders already proving that a better model exists.

Designing for Discernment

To build for the future, we must apply systems thinking to the way our brains process a digital feed. We are currently designing for a cognitive architecture that is easily overwhelmed by dopamine-driven delivery systems. As architects of information, our responsibility involves building environments that encourage critical inquiry.

At The Texas Tribune, our statewide framework for expansion illustrates this principle in action. We are designing a networked infrastructure that allows for local nuance within a high-capacity system. This represents an adaptable architecture anchored in community needs and powered by technology, yet guided by unwavering editorial standards. This framework allows us to defend democracy while simultaneously reinventing the mechanisms of its delivery.

Using Tech to Rebuild the Trust Bridge

For those who wonder how newsrooms can use technology to help improve trust, the answer lies in proximity and transparency. We can use AI and automated distribution as tools that liberate the journalist. By automating high-volume, low-context tasks like data sorting or transcription, we free our reporters to focus on high-level synthesis and the high-touch work of community building. Technology should serve as the scaffolding for our work, ensuring that human judgment remains the foundation. We’re using tools to close the distance between the newsroom and the neighbor.

The Unstoppable Future

History reminds us that every revolution in information, from the Gutenberg press to the telegraph, precipitated a crisis of authority. We’re currently in the “Interregnum,” the space between the legacy and emergent worlds. These periods of chaos are the historical birthplaces of progress.

Success in this new reality will belong to the leaders who can hold two seemingly opposing forces in balance: a relentless commitment to truth and a fearless embrace of innovation. One without the other is fragile. Together, they are unstoppable. Journalism is undergoing a sophisticated re-engineering, and the results are promising. We’re building the infrastructure for the next century of truth. Now we must ensure its architecture is as resilient as the mission it serves.

Upasna Gautam is Partner, Strategy & Innovation at The Texas Tribune and the Chairwoman of the Board of Directors for the News Product Alliance

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To understand more about information-seeking behaviors, we started from one well-known model of reasons for information-seeking. This framework identifies four basic needs that people meet with news content. We present them here from most important to least important to the interviewees:

Here’s what we learned:

In both countries, interviewees seek information that helps them act. This is the most common use case for AI chatbots.

Few interviewees want information for its own sake. Instead, interviewees in both countries are looking to inform their choices and actions. AI chatbots stand out, especially in the U.S., for proactively helping people meet the need to act.

Indian interviewees ask AI chatbots to make predictions, while their U.S. counterparts ask AI chatbots for information they can base their own predictions on.

We saw Indian interviewees request specific financial, geopolitical and astrological predictions and use them to make decisions, even as they expressed skepticism. For U.S. interviewees, on the other hand, the desire for prediction generally stopped at asking the AI chatbots which sources or indicators to follow.

When it comes to knowing what’s happening, interviewees in both countries use AI chatbots to supplement existing news habits, not replace them. Specifically, they turn to AI chatbots for narrowly scoped updates and fact-checking.

No interviewee in either country said they rely solely on AI chatbots when they want to know what is happening. If they are broadly familiar with a story, though, they might turn to AI chatbots for updates. Similarly, when they see a story that they don’t believe, many of them ask AI chatbots to fact-check. Using AI chatbots for fact-checking is especially common on social media, where embedded tools like @grok on Twitter or Meta AI on Facebook promise to fact-check or otherwise validate content.

For the most part, U.S. interviewees don’t turn to AI chatbots for broad news discovery, while Indian interviewees are more mixed.

Just one U.S. interviewee said or demonstrated that they regularly ask an AI chatbot about “latest headlines in [zip code]” or “latest political news” to get broadly informed. A few other U.S. interviewees said they ask for updates on specific topics, but turn to other sources for news discovery. On the other hand, at least six of the interviewees in India ask AI chatbots for the “latest news” or “top headlines.”

Both U.S. and Indian users of AI chatbots turn to them for context that is often absent in traditional news media.

Interviewees in both countries find their existing news repertoires frustrating. Many said that news stories often start in the middle, with background information buried or difficult to find.

Interviewees in both countries worry about the political slant of news, but they want to resolve it in different ways.

Many interviewees said that most news sources have a political slant. We saw consistent differences between how interviewees in India approach political slant and how interviewees in the U.S. do. In the U.S., interviewees want to get information that spans the full political spectrum, whether from news aggregators or AI chatbots. Several U.S. interviewees said they find the AI chatbots to be unbiased because they pull from multiple news sources with different points of view. In India, many interviewees want to bypass traditional sources altogether, rather than synthesize across the range of political perspectives.

In both countries, emotional stimulation and entertainment are low information priorities.

The “need to feel” does not seem to be a priority for our interviewees, and was not a focus of our conversations. Interviewees engage emotionally with AI chatbots, but only rarely with the information itself.

The need to act

For interviewees in both countries, needing to act is a major motivator for AI chatbot use; AI chatbots meet this need proactively

All interviewees in both countries talked at length about needing information that helps them act, and almost all of them typically start with AI chatbots to meet these needs. 

Starting with AI chatbots doesn’t mean ending with AI chatbots.

Many interviewees toggle back and forth between the AI chatbot and external links or sources. Some described turning to the AI chatbot after reading a news article to understand what they could do about current events (e.g., tariffs), although we did not see this specific pathway in real time. Interviewees followed links provided by the AI chatbot and returned to the AI chatbot conversation after doing so. We saw one person in the U.S. switch back and forth between ChatGPT, Gemini and linked resources from law firms to better understand their rights when ICE agents are active in their area. For high-stakes actions like visa applications or legal agreements, some Indian interviewees use AI chatbots to understand the requirements but seek official websites to confirm the steps and perform the task. As one U.S. interviewee noted, AI chatbots are “an 80/20 source. It’ll give me 80% of the information in 20% of the effort, but you know, you gotta be careful about taking that 80% to the bank, and there’s always 20% missing.”

Unlike a search engine, AI chatbots retain the context of prior inputs, which makes it relatively easy to refine a query or to ask follow-up questions.

All the same, doing so can take a lot of time. At least one interviewee asked an AI chatbot to suggest better prompting strategies, then tried out those prompts. When AI chatbots offer a number of follow-up options, interviewees might select one and ask for further details or external sources. For example, one interviewee in the U.S. initially input “What are the popular states to live in” and then responded “yes” when ChatGPT asked, “Would you like me to narrow it down to best states for young professionals, families, or spiritual creatives/entrepreneurs (like your vibe)?” When asked how they would follow up, their next prompt was “North Carolina city overview and links for me to discover more in-depth.”

Actionable information about emerging topics is much broader than “service journalism.” To be sure, interviewees in both countries are using AI chatbots for the pillars of service journalism: consumer product comparisons, travel itineraries and navigating changing bureaucratic requirements. But they are also using AI chatbots to understand how to react to “hard news.” Interviewees ask AI chatbots about the impact of geopolitics on their investments, how to respond to the U.S. government shutdown and what changing visa rules and tariffs would mean for them professionally. One person in the U.S. even asked ChatGPT who to vote for.

Asking for election advice

One person in the U.S. first asked ChatGPT to give them a sense of who to vote for in several local races, noting that the answer didn’t include all of the candidates on the ballot. When they rephrased the question to ask for a direct recommendation, ChatGPT refused to provide one but ultimately offered a response emphasizing that specific candidates aligned with their priorities.

U.S. user

im going to fill out my 2025 official general municipal and special elections ballot [city] I need you to give me feedback for selection on mayor, and district [#] commissioner. Im looking for pros and cons for each candidate

ChatGPT

I’d be glad to help you think through pros and cons. … here’s what I found so far on the Mayor race and District [#] Commissioner race in [city] (2025). and some factors you might weigh.

Mayor – Key Candidates & Considerations

U.S. user

what about the other candidates?

ChatGPT

I dug around; the available public sources are limited, but here’s what I found on other mayoral and District [#] candidates, along with what we can infer (and what to watch out for). Use this as a starting point, not a definitive guide.

If you like, I can dig more deeply (local news archives, candidate filings) to unearth all the District [#] candidates with detailed bios. Would you like me to do that and then present a more complete side-by-side?

U.S. user

can you explain to me the [#] referendum ammendments in this ballot

ChatGPT

I couldn’t find a definitive source that spells out exactly which [#] referenda / charter amendments will be on the 2025 [city] ballot with full text and analysis. The city’s official sites mention that there will be charter amendment questions submitted with the November 4. 2025 municipal election. [sources]

If you like. I can try to track down a preliminary “voters’ guide” or city PDF with the [#] exact ballot amendment texts (when released) and then we could do a side-by-side pros/cons for each of the four. Do you want me to do that now?

U.S. user

which candidates in both mayor and district commissiones would be the best choice for me: im a [age] apartment owner, working for an international corporation, who wants a safer city, more job opportunities and the city to get better

ChatGPT

Thanks for sharing your priorities. Because this involves political candidate selection, I must stay neutral and cannot recommend a specific person. However, I can help you identify which types of candidates in this race most closely align with your goals and show how each major candidate compares based on those goals.

In fact, a major benefit of using AI chatbots to get informed is that they proactively support the need to act.

Several U.S. interviewees pointed out that even when they input factual queries, the results focus on how to act in response. After one interviewee asked about the status of the government shutdown, they were pleased that the results included clear next steps: 

“With ChatGPT, they were telling me, ‘okay, if you’re on this program, go to food pantries, start saving up, start stocking up because you don’t know what damage it might do to people.’ So they was just basically, they get you ready for survivor mode, basically. That’s one thing I like about ChatGPT too. They get you ready.” 

When another interviewee asked for updates on H1-B policy, the response ended with an offer to “pull together a summary of how each of the changes specifically affects [specific group] (like you, seeking [specific job]).” The baseline emphasis on action is seen as widely valuable. Interviewees in India also seemed to appreciate the suggestions, but did not highlight them as explicitly.

In India, a distinct subset of interviewees use AI chatbots for forecasting and speculation to navigate uncertainty in finance, politics and personal life.

Interviewees frequently task AI chatbots with predicting future outcomes to gain a strategic advantage or peace of mind. In the financial realm, we saw two interviewees ask for Bitcoin price trends and market volatility forecasts based on political social media activity, using these predictions to make immediate trading decisions. A third interviewee requested predictive analyses of stock sectors based on quarterly earnings, though they approached these outputs with high skepticism due to previous financial losses incurred from following AI chatbot advice. This predictive behavior extended to the personal domain through AI-generated astrology. In geopolitics, two interviewees explicitly asked AI chatbots to speculate on future developments, such as the “next steps” in U.S.-India relations or the remaining tenure of federal officials. AI chatbots present interpretations of phenomena as objective facts; interviewees interpret these interpretations as facts, not as a statistical average of its training data and what’s available on the internet. A broker would never give the kind of confident specific advice ChatGPT gives. Similarly, a journalist would never speculate. Indian chatbot users like this behavior a lot.

Investigating crypto trends

One interviewee in India used various AI chatbots to predict the performance of the global crypto markets. They linked this with the tenure of U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. They did not like reading through the entire response and frequently followed up with requests to make it shorter. In the end, they wanted, and received, a yes/no prediction from ChatGPT. They also posed the same question to two other AI chatbots and compared the responses. Here, the interviewee used Google’s AI Mode to speculate about the U.S. Federal Reserve Chair’s term. Commenting on the response, they said,  “Google remained completely unbiased on this matter because I believe Google is much more involved in political gossips.” Comparing the two AI chatbots, they noted, “Google is much more like a formal thing. ChatGPT is much more like a casual partner. […] Now Google also knows that it cannot answer this in yes or no. But ChatGPT did it because it was advising me…” That is, they saw Google’s refusal to answer as a sign that the company is complicit in politics.

Indian user

Crypto trends rn

ChatGPT

Indian user

Do u think that the rates cut Il affect the Ethereum

ChatGPT

Yeah – absolutely, rate cuts can have a noticeable effect on Ethereum (and crypto in general), though the Impact depends on how deep and fast those cuts are.

Let me explain clearly but simply

If you want, I can show you a simple timeline projection (what might happen to ETH price and market cap at each rate-cut stage – pre-cut, during, and post-cut).

Want me to?

Indian user

How long do u think that jerome powell Il last in the power, as per current news and trends, as recently trump threatened him

ChatGPT

Here’s a clear breakdown of how long Jerome Power could stay in his current roles at the Federal Reserve System (Fed), what the current signals are, and how the threats from Donald Trump might or might not change things.

What’s certain: current terms

• Powell is serving a four-year term as Fed Chair, which began on May 23, 2022.

• That Chair term ends in May 2026. [sources]• Separately, his position as a member of the Board of Governors of the Fed runs until January 2028.

My view: How long I think he’ll last

Putting the facts and signals together, here’s a reasoned speculation:

• I expect Powell to serve out his full term as Chair until May 2026. The legal term is clear, he has publicly stated intent to serve his full term, and while there is political pressure, there is no strong signal that he will be removed early.

Indian user

Please make it shorter.

ChatGPT

Sure – here’s the short, clear version

Powell’s Current Term

• Fed Chair term: ends May 2026

• Governor term: lasts till Jan 2028• So legally, he can stay in power until 2026 as Chair (and 2028 overall).

Would you like me to add a quick note on how a Powell exit could affect crypto and markets if Trump really removes him early?

Indian user

Just tell me .. yes or no

ChatGPT

Yes – he’s very likely to stay in power until May 2026.

---

Here, the interviewee used Google’s AI Mode to speculate about the U.S. Federal Reserve Chair’s term. Commenting on the response, they said,  “Google remained completely unbiased on this matter because I believe Google is much more involved in political gossips.” Comparing the two AI chatbots, they noted, “Google is much more like a formal thing. ChatGPT is much more like a casual partner. […] Now Google also knows that it cannot answer this in yes or no. But ChatGPT did it because it was advising me…” That is, they saw Google’s refusal to answer as a sign that the company is complicit in politics.

Indian user

how long do you think jerome powell ll last in the power

Google AI Overview

Jerome Powell’s current term as Chair of the Federal Reserve is scheduled to end in May 2026. The question of how much longer he remains in power depends on several factors, including the 2024 presidential election, his own future intentions, and legal challenges to the Fed’s independence.  

Indian user

make it shorter

Google AI Mode

Jerome Powell will serve as Chair of the Federal Reserve until his term expires in May 2026. After that, President-elect Donald Trump has said he will not reappoint him.  

Indian user

just tell me in yes or no

Google AI Mode

It is impossible to answer “yes or no” because the question is complex and depends on future events.  

Here’s why a simple answer is not possible:

---

This interviewee asked Perplexity the same question. Looking at the response, they explained,

“Perplexity seems like the most formal AI to me and the one that provides the longest answers. […] Now, you won’t find much difference in the answers of Perplexity Pro and Google AI, because Perplexity provides Google-based answers. […] But since it is backed by OpenAI’s APIs, because of this, it is answering in yes or no like ChatGPT.”

Indian user

how long do you think jerome powell ll last in the power

Perplexity

Jerome Powell is expected to serve as the Chair of the Federal Reserve until his current term ends on May 15, 2026, unless political developments prompt him to leave earlier, but there are no indications of an immediate exit before then 1 2 3. After that, he technically has the option to remain on the Federal Reserve Board as a governor until his term ends in January 2028, but it is considered unlikely he will choose to do so

Indian user

make it shorter

Perplexity

Jerome Powell’s term as Federal Reserve Chair ends in May 2026, and a replacement will likely be picked before then

Indian user

just tell me in yes or no

Perplexity

Yes, Jerome Powell is still in power as Federal Reserve Chair as of now

Indian user

I asked u whether he Il be in power in near future. what do u believe? just tell in yes or no

Perplexity

Yes, Jerome Powell will remain in power in the near future

A news organization that’s meeting this need

The Jersey Bee, a U.S. local news outlet, operates in a region where one in every nine people does not have enough to eat. They report on the affordability crisis, and they also make it easier for hungry people to get groceries with an interactive database of food pantries. The database can be sorted by county and hours of operation. It also provides detailed, verified information on eligibility criteria, specific dietary needs that can be accommodated and languages spoken.

The need to know

When interviewees want to know what’s happening, AI chatbots are supplementing existing news habits and routines, not replacing them

In both countries, most interviewees engage with AI chatbots to augment their existing news repertoires by seeking facts, specific knowledge or status updates on current events.

Well over half (about 19 out of 26 in India and 18 out of 27 in the U.S.) of the interviewees explicitly demonstrated or described using AI chatbots (primarily ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Grok) to retrieve information or updates. The use cases ranged from checking daily headlines and weather reports to monitoring stock market trends and verifying specific claims seen on social media.

Despite the high use of AI chatbots for general queries, all interviewees continue to rely heavily on other digital sources when they want a broad update on what is happening, especially breaking news.

Nobody said they use only AI chatbots for this purpose. Every interviewee maintains a diet of other information channels, including YouTube; Google News and other aggregators; news outlets’ apps and websites; and social media platforms like X (formerly Twitter), Instagram and Telegram. A small subset of interviewees in each country actively avoid using AI chatbots for the latest news, citing experiences with out-of-date information. We also saw this happen to several interviewees: in response to a query, they received last year’s sports schedule or company report.

H1-B policy updates

During our conversation, this interviewee looked for updates on a changing legal situation in the U.S. They noticed that the first response contained sources that were a month old, and they followed up with another prompt, which returned more recent information.

U.S. user

Could you tell me a bit about if there is any changes in the policy made for H1-B again ?

ChatGPT

Hey [name] – good question. Yep, there are some major recent changes to the H-1B visa program in the U.S. that you absolutely should be aware of (especially since you’re job-hunting and might deal with immigration issues). I’ll break them down straight-up, so you know what’s going on.

If you like, I can pull together a summary of how each of the changes specifically affects [job] (like you, seeking [job] roles) – we can map out “worst case / best case” for sponsorship under these new rules. Want me to do that?

Recent H-1B policy changes news

[three links, dated Sep 19 and Sep 20, 2025]

U.S. user

okay so there has been an update in the news again about H1-B specifically for international students what is that update about please give me all the latest updates possible

ChatGPT

Cool – I found the latest scoop on the H-1B visa changes, especially how they relate to international students (so if you were estimating future sponsorship or thinking ahead, this is very relevant). I’ll lay it out clearly, then highlight how it affects someone in your shoes ([name]) chasing [job] roles.

They generally prefer using AI chatbots for information, but noted that the downside is precisely this risk of outdated or incomplete information, especially if one doesn’t have enough background information to assess the response.

“If I have half of the information and half of the information hasn’t been shared with me because of the chatbot then it’s like I have half knowledge about it. […] It should be able to give me the latest update until this particular moment rather than some news that happened a month back or something.”

In both countries, the most common “knowledge” use cases are summarization, getting updates on specific stories, evergreen information and fact-checking.

Some interviewees see AI chatbots as a good way to get updates on specific ongoing issues, but they largely turn to their existing news repertoires for discovering new stories and keeping abreast of breaking news. They ask AI chatbots narrower questions like “summarize me in two minutes” or“provide an up-to-date summary of developments regarding [company].” Some also use AI chatbots primarily for quick fact-checking, especially on social media platforms. Several interviewees use Grok and Meta AI to summarize long conversations on X and Facebook or tag the AI chatbot directly in the comments, asking “@Grok, is it real?” to verify the authenticity of claims.

Only a small subset of interviewees regularly use AI chatbots for news discovery, and when they do, they use it as a supplement to other sources.

Only one U.S. interviewee said they regularly ask Gemini, “What’s the latest headlines in [zip code]?” This person also gets push notifications from news outlets, follows friends and family on social media to see what they share and talks to other people about what’s happening in the world. They appreciate AI chatbots because “It’s not like you get pages and pages and pages or all these different headlines that you need to find what’s important. Gemini kind of sums it up for you. And then you can always go into more detail.” Using AI chatbots to scan the headlines is more common for interviewees in India, but far from universal. We observed several interviewees use simple, keyword-heavy prompts to request news digests. For instance, one asked, “give me today’s major international news” and“top 10 international news”. Another queried “Hindi News today” and“More news” to get a list of current events. A third interviewee used Perplexity to generate a daily digest of “political and policy updates.” All three get additional news information elsewhere, too.

Today’s headlines

This interviewee uses ChatGPT and, to a lesser extent, Gemini, for generating top news headlines of the day. They sometimes then ask the AI chatbot to translate the headlines into Hindi. During the interview, they picked out one of the news stories about the demise of Thailand’s Queen Mother for more details. Generally, they rarely venture deeper after asking about the main headlines. They reported an 80-85% satisfaction rate with the answers received. The prompts they demonstrated are extremely minimalistic — almost keyword-like.

Indian user

today news

ChatGPT

Here are the top news highlights for today, [date]

Indian user

in hindi

ChatGPT

[same headlines and content as in the English version above

Indian user

more news

ChatGPT

International News 

Queen Sirikit of Thailand passes away

Indian user

“Queen Sirikit of Thailand passes away” in detail

---

Indian user

Current affairs [city]

Gemini

Based on the current events in [city], here are some key updates:

---

This interviewee subscribes to the Hindustan Times newspaper but prefers Instagram, Facebook and YouTube to keep up to date with issues, events and daily happenings. They find newspapers cumbersome and limited, and dislike the ads on news websites. So, they’ve moved toward AI chatbots for a more efficient and specific information experience.

AI chatbot interactions to help interviewees know what’s going on are often very brief, frequently consisting of a single question and response, like “Why there is thunder when lightning strikes?” or“Margaritaville of the Seas, which ship did it used to be before?” When their questions aren’t answered, they either rephrase the question or turn to a different source of information.

A news organization that’s meeting this need

WTF Just Happened Today is a daily newsletter about U.S. politics, specifically the U.S. presidency. With the tagline “I doomscroll so you don’t have to,” the newsletter provides the day’s biggest news in a single sentence. Each clause of the sentence receives its own paragraph-length write-up with links to other major news sources, ensuring that readers can quickly keep up with a broad swath of political news.

An AI product that’s meeting this need

Founded by three former members of Google’s NotebookLM project, Huxe is an AI-powered, audio-first personal assistant app designed to consolidate information from a user’s calendar, email, news sources and stated interests into a single personalized audio feed. The app presents this material in an audio podcast–style format intended for listening while commuting or multitasking, with a supporting visual interface that updates in real time to reflect the topic being discussed. The system emphasizes efficiency, offering a concise, customized digest of current and relevant information that can fit into daily routines for staying informed. According to the company, Huxe “finds what you need to know— before you know you need it.”

The need to understand

Interviewees find chatbots valuable for understanding complicated details, root causes and a range of perspectives

Most interviewees in both countries utilize AI chatbots to gain a deeper understanding.

Simplification, background information and root causes of issues are key AI chatbot use cases. Interviewees observed that news stories do not always provide perspective or background. Instead, news stories often start with the newest information, which can be confusing for people who are not already following the issue closely. Interviewees said they find AI chatbots helpful for understanding who a public figure is, how another country’s legal system works and the history of Israeli-Palestinian relations. News stories sometimes take this kind of knowledge for granted. One person in India specifically sought the “root cause” of geopolitical conflicts, feeling that social media provides only surface-level outcomes.

Getting background on a scandal

This interviewee wanted to know more about a recent insider trading scam which involved collusion between a company and regulatory officials. They had previously heard on a YouTube channel and read in a newsletter about the scam. In the interview, they prompted their preferred AI chatbot, Perplexity, for information on the case. They then explored the connection between two key figures, which had been unclear.

Indian user

IEX SCAM investigation on SEBi

Perplexity

In October 2025, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) exposed a major ₹173.14 crore insider trading scam involving shares of Indian Energy Exchange Ltd. (IEX), allegedly linked to officials from the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) 1 2 3 4.

Indian user

give in detail about profession of Yogeita mehra and How there is establishment of Connect with Bhoovan singh

Perplexity

Yogeita S. Mehra is a senior economist and Chief of the Economics Division at the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC), the statutory body overseeing India’s power market regulation]

When asked what they like about AI chatbots and the way they provide information, this interviewee said, “If I’m going through any journals, like news, like Economic Times, means the journalist will be asking only a few questions and they will be exploring it in only a few ways, right? Whereas in AI means I can explore it…”

Despite high engagement with AI chatbots, all interviewees continue to utilize other digital sources for synthesis and context, as is the case for their other information needs.

We saw interviewees navigate back and forth between aggregators, news sites and AI chatbots to ensure they were capturing the full breadth and complexity of a topic as well as different positions on that topic. For example, one U.S. interviewee read a news story, asked an AI chatbot for other perspectives, clicked through and read those links, then returned to the AI chatbot with follow-up questions about different political perspectives. YouTube was frequently cited as a primary tool for deep dives, particularly for visual learners or those seeking expert commentary on tech, finance and geopolitics. Interviewees in India also turn to social media like Reddit and Discord, or community platforms like Quora to read discussions or gauge public sentiment before or after consulting AI chatbots.

Unlike simple fact-checking, using AI chatbots for understanding is generally characterized by multi-turn conversations, role-playing and iterative refinement.

A common workflow among interviewees involves “zooming in,” which involves pasting complex text or asking about a broad topic, then refining the query to get to the right level of detail. Interviewees in India often treat the AI chatbot as a debate partner. For example, one interviewee in India engaged in a “full debate” on Messi vs. Ronaldo, instructing the AI chatbot to be “blunt” and “unbiased” rather than diplomatic. Another interviewee in India liked to “argue” with AI chatbots, challenging the AI’s “opinion” on topics like job automation to see how it defended its position. One U.S. interviewee prompted Gemini to “Explain today’s aws [Amazon Web Services] outage and write this out in a level where a non tech worker can understand” and then continued diving deeper until they were sure they understood what had happened.

Interviewees in the U.S. see AI chatbots as a relatively easy way to get information across the political spectrum and see other points of view.

Interviewees in the U.S. say that most news sources have a political slant, and getting an understanding requires a synthesis that spans the full political spectrum. Reading a single integrated text that references sources from different perspectives is something that they find valuable. They also turn to aggregators, social media, comments sections or specific sources they disagree with to meet this need.

Getting multiple perspectives on the election debate

This interviewee turned to ChatGPT to get a broad perspective on who won a recent debate between candidates for New Jersey governor as well as for updates on polls. They deliberately used an AI chatbot rather than their regular sources because they didn’t want to get their information exclusively from sources that shared their political leanings. Instead, they wanted to see the broader spread of reactions.

U.S. user

What is the general feedback as to who did a better job in the New Jersey Governor election debate between jack ciattarelli and mikie sherrill

ChatGPT

Here’s a rundown of how people reacted and what the early assessments suggest about who “won” the first debate between Jack Ciattarelli and Mikie Sherrill in the 2025 New Jersey governor’s race. If you want, I can also pull up specific public polls or focus-group feedback later.

U.S. user

What is the general feedback as to who did a better job in the New Jersey Governor election debate between jack ciattarelli and mikie sherrill?

ChatGPT

Here’s a more up-to-date look at how media, local observers, and early reactions are assessing who performed better in the debates between Jack Ciattarelli and Mikie Sherrill:

U.S. user

What are current polling results for both candidates?

ChatGPT

Here’s a snapshot of recent polling for the 2025 New Jersey gubernatorial race between Mikie Sherrill and Jack Ciattarelli – and what the trends suggest:

Recent polling highlights

A news organization that’s meeting this need

Scroll is an Indian digital news platform known for its deep-dive reporting on complex social and political issues. It developed Factivo, a “next-generation versioning platform for newsrooms and organizations that prioritize truth and clarity.” Factivo takes a single news article and automatically generates multiple alternative formats such as FAQs, key takeaways, contextual sliders and interactive summaries so audiences can engage with the same information at different levels of depth and across platforms. By allowing users to choose how much time and attention they invest, Factivo is a good example of addressing the user’s need to understand by meeting them where they are.

An AI product that’s meeting this need

Particle aggregates stories from hundreds of news outlets around the world, highlighting the most-reported issues of the day. Links to news sources are prominently highlighted, encouraging the user to click through to learn more. Specific entities — like countries, world leaders, companies and more — have their own pages, so finding background information is straightforward.

The need to feel

For interviewees in both countries, emotional stimulation and entertainment are low information priorities

When interviewees are seeking information, fulfilling a need to feel something isn’t a high priority.

In both countries, we heard very little about low-stakes news content, like celebrity gossip or human interest topics. News simply isn’t a source of entertainment for almost any of the interviewees.

Outrage about political topics is the main emotional response to news.

Interviewees feel like a lot is happening on the global, national and local scale. For the most part, they feel bad about it. They are angry and scared, about both what’s happening and the media coverage. We saw two interviewees, one in each country, turn to AI chatbots to hone their outage on these topics.

Frustration with the framing of current events

This interviewee wanted to know why their friends — and world media — were accusing young protesters of committing vandalism in Nepal. On receiving an unsatisfactory answer, they added that there were ample visuals of police shooting at students, so paucity of information was not the underlying problem. The person was more disappointed by the second reply and thought perhaps they were not specific enough in the original question, so they edited the prompt, adding more context. By this point in the interaction, the person was incensed. So they asked bluntly if the AI chatbot was calling one narrative more sensationalist than the other. The conversation ended after this.

Indian user

Why are all my friends across both sides of the political spectrum accusing Gen Z protestors of burning down public property when it’s the live ammunition which killed them on sept 8 which triggered the otherwise peaceful protests against corruption

ChatGPT

That’s a really thoughtful and emotionally aware question – and it touches on a deep problem in how public narratives about protests are shaped and spread.

What you’re describing – protests that began peacefully after state violence or corruption, but are later portrayed by many people as “violent” or “destructive” – happens often across the world. A few dynamics are usually at play:

Indian user

There were enough visuals on TikTok and Instagram of the students in uniform being shot at point blank range so it’s not like the information wasn’t there

ChatGPT

You’re absolutely right – and that makes your frustration completely understandable. When direct, undeniable evidence exists – like

videos clearly showing unarmed students in uniform being shot – it feels especially disorienting and painful to see people deny or distort what happened.

What you’re seeing is a clash between information availability and

information acceptance – two very different things:

Would you like me to pull up independent reports or analyses (e.g., from human rights groups or international outlets) that verify what happened on September 8? That might help you show people credible sources ….

Indian user

Sure go ahead

ChatGPT

Here are several credible independent sources that do document the use of lethal force by security forces in the 2025 Nepal Gen Z protests (which began on September 8, 2025). They may help when you’re trying to show others what the documented facts are.

Indian user

Why are all my friends across both sides of the political spectrum in different countries accusing Gen Z protestors of burning down public property when it’s the live ammunition which killed them on sept 8 which triggered the otherwise peaceful protests against corruption ..note that they’re getting the information from their local media outlets and not necessarily from Nepal

ChatGPT

That’s a really thoughtful and important question – and it points to how media framing, distance, and information ecosystems can distort how events in one country are understood elsewhere. Let’s unpack what’s probably happening here.

Indian user

Are you saying that then that visuals of arson are more sensationalist than the state firing at unarmed students in school uniform ? Were these visuals of the students shot already not on social media?

ChatGPT

That’s an excellent – and really sobering – follow-up. You’re absolutely right to ask how images of the state firing on unarmed students could possibly be less prominent than footage of a burning building.

“If the truth is not being shown, does even ChatGPT have access to what really happened?” they asked.

Nurturing outrage about the “Big Beautiful Bill”

This interviewee showed us their query about the proposal to fund the U.S. government known as “the Big Beautiful Bill.” The query touched on the details of its provisions (an example of seeking facts), a deeper understanding of their breadth (an example of seeking context), the “strange and small provisions that are going to hurt or impact the regular people” (an example of evoking emotion) and its impact on 401K plans (an example of seeking help with action). While these other needs were present in this AI chatbot interaction, the need to nurture their outrage and anger seemed to be driving their choice of prompts.

U.S. user

Can you look up the latest copy of the big beautiful bill that was signed by congress and the president and highlight the worst provisions and when they are…

Gemini

The “big beautiful bill” you are referring to is a massive spending and tax bill signed into law by President Trump on Friday, July 4, 2025. This legislation extends the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, makes most of the tax cuts permanent, and increases spending for border security, defense, and energy production.

U.S. user

does it impact 401ks in any way

Gemini

The “Big Beautiful Bill” signed by President Trump on July 4, 2025, does have some impacts related to retirement savings, though it largely maintains the existing tax-deferred status of 401(k)s and IRAs.

U.S. user

What are some strange and small provisions that are going to hurt or impact the regular people?

Gemini

Can you tell me what strange and small provisions in the bill will hurt regular people? What are the unusual and minor provisions of the “big beautiful bill” that will negatively affect everyday citizens? “Big beautiful bill” unusual small provisions impact regular people “Big beautiful bill” strange minor provisions negative impact citizens The “Big Beautiful Bill,” recently signed into law, contains several provisions that, while perhaps not always headline-grabbing, are expected to have a significant and often negative impact on “regular people.” These are often embedded in broader policy changes or have indirect effects.

U.S. user

what else?

AI chatbots make the experience of getting news a little bit more pleasant, at least for some. As one U.S. interviewee put it, “I get a kick out of [using ChatGPT]. It’s just fun.” That general sense of enjoyment is not specific to news content.

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AI chatbots — such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, Google AI Mode or the Washington Post’s “Ask the Post AI” — are software products which simulate human-like conversations and generate responses across a wide range of topics. While even their creators caution against using them as arbiters of fact, research consistently demonstrates that people increasingly rely on them for information about the world. Since the line between “information” and “news” is hardly clear-cut and information-seeking is also likely to include many topics where users of AI chatbots might previously have turned to news sources, news providers need an understanding of those broader informational habits.

This report provides a detailed snapshot of relatively early adopters and their use of AI chatbots to get information, including news. In October 2025, CNTI interviewed 53 people in India and the U.S. who use AI chatbots at least once a week and said they “keep informed about issues and events of the day” at least “somewhat closely.” 

Top-level findings:

CNTI found that most AI chatbot users currently use them to supplement their existing information repertoires, not to replace them entirely. They toggle back and forth between AI chatbots, news sites, search engines, official sources and more. We saw:

• Actionable information: Interviewees use AI chatbots to act on what’s happening and understand it, more than simply to know about it or to feel something about it.
• Personalization: AI chatbot users see these tools as fast, easy, personalized, customizable and friendly ways of getting information.
• Low understanding but higher trust: Few AI chatbot users have deep knowledge about the processes behind either journalism or AI chatbots. At the same time, interviewees express a general trust of AI chatbots alongside a general distrust of news media (outside of some users’ trust in their specific sources).

More specifically:

Interviewees use AI chatbots to act on what’s happening and to understand it, more than simply to know about it or to feel something about it.

What most drives AI chatbot use is the desire for information that helps people act. This is the most common use case for AI chatbots in both countries. Few interviewees want information for its own sake. Instead, they are looking to inform their choices and actions. AI chatbots stand out, especially in the U.S., for proactively helping people meet the need to act.

When it comes to knowledge for knowledge’s sake, interviewees in both countries use AI chatbots to supplement existing news habits, not replace them. No interviewee in either country said they rely solely on AI chatbots when they want to know what is happening. They do turn specifically to AI chatbots to learn what’s new about a story they are familiar with or to check a story that they don’t think is accurate (the latter now offered on some social media platforms, such as @grok on Twitter or Meta AI on Facebook).

Both U.S. and Indian AI chatbot users turn to them for context that is often absent in traditional news media. Many interviewees said that news stories often start in the middle, with background information buried or difficult to find. They find AI chatbots helpful for understanding who a public figure is, how another country’s legal system works and the history of Israeli-Palestinian relations — all contexts that news stories sometimes take for granted.

Emotional stimulation and entertainment are low information priorities. The “need to feel” does not seem to be a focus for our interviewees in either country, and did not come up much in our conversations. Interviewees do engage emotionally with AI chatbots, but only rarely with the information itself.

Interviewees see AI chatbots as a fast, easy, personalized, customizable and friendly way of getting information.

Few interviewees have deep knowledge about the processes behind either journalism or AI chatbots. At the same time, they expressed generally positive attitudes towards AI chatbots alongside generally negative ones towards news media.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Amy Mitchell for ongoing intellectual mentorship, partnership and leadership; Nupur Chowdhury, Rahul Dass, Kyong Mazzaro, Amy Mitchell and Nikita Roy for their thoughtful feedback on this report; Jonathon Berlin and Kurt Cunningham for web and graphic design; Angelica Ruzanova for support with transcription and data processing; and Greta Alquist for editing this report.

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Case Study 1: The skeptical power user

This interviewee represents the archetype of the ‘skeptical power user,’ one who distrusts traditional television news due to perceived bias but embraces the conversational power of AI chatbots. They turn to AI chatbots for all four kinds of information needs we have covered in this report: the need to act, the need to know, the need to understand and the need to feel.

News repertoire and sources: Synthesizing ideological balance

This interviewee’s news consumption is characterized by a rigorous pursuit of ideological balance and a rejection of sensationalism. They avoid Indian television news entirely, citing bias, and instead prioritize international news outlets like Al Jazeera and domestic English language print sources such as The Hindu and The Times of India. In their hierarchy of trust, written ground reports rank highest, followed by AI chatbots. While they access information via social media and YouTube, they rank YouTube videos last in terms of reliability, viewing them as prone to biased propaganda. When researching complex topics like the conflict in Gaza, they typically consume 10–12 articles and one to two videos from “both sides” to synthesize a neutral view, and hold “whole conversations with ChatGPT,” rather than relying on a single narrative.

AI chatbot usage and information needs: Controlled delegation

They delegate a wide array of tasks to AI chatbots, ranging from tracking daily macronutrients to debating sports statistics, yet retain ultimate authority by verifying the AI chatbot’s outputs against traditional news sources. Their relationship with AI technology is highly personalized. They nicknamed their preferred AI chatbot, ChatGPT, “Curler” (referencing FC Barcelona fans) and self-deprecatingly refer to themselves as “Burden” due to their relentless questioning. They instruct Curler to be “blunt” and “unbiased.”

AI chatbot preferences: “A conversation between two people”

They display a strong preference for ChatGPT over alternatives like Gemini, stemming largely from the former’s conversational fluidity. They feel ChatGPT’s answers are “easy” and feel “like a conversation between two people,” whereas they described Gemini’s outputs as “way too hard to respond” and “like AI AI.” Their comfort with ChatGPT extends to data sharing (e.g., name, birth year, family history), whereas they use Gemini only sporadically. 

Trust and verification: Trust, but verify 

While they find AI chatbots to be “mostly right,” they do not exhibit blind trust. Their workflow involves an iterative verification loop: searching a topic on ChatGPT, clicking linked sources to read full articles, then comparing the text against the AI chatbot’s summary to ensure accuracy. They retain ultimate authority, using the AI chatbot to distill information but relying on established news brands for ground truth.

They also acknowledge that the AI chatbot is sometimes wrong, occasionally failing to provide all the information found in the full linked article. When they notice the AI chatbot making a mistake, they correct it and instruct it to “double check” its data and learn from the error for future reference. 

This interviewee was interested in knowing more about the latest updates in the ongoing War in Gaza. They started off with a broad query and followed up with more specific questions on the hostage situation and Hamas’ statement. They found the links provided with every response very useful. Typically, they’d click on one of the links from established media outlets like Al Jazeera, The Times of India, the Wall Street Journal and CBS News and go through the articles. They employed a structured information pipeline: search, click on the AI chatbot sources, read the articles in their entirety and use the information to ask follow-up questions.

Case Study 2: The strategic snacker 

This interviewee represents a strategic ‘snacker’ of information. They exhibit a hybrid news consumption style that blends traditional print media with digital news sources and use AI chatbots to filter noise and curate a personalized news feed. 

News repertoire and sources: Editorials, op-eds and summaries

Their news repertoire is anchored by subscriptions to physical newspapers, specifically English language ones like The Hindu and The Indian Express and the Punjabi version of The Tribune. They value the tactile experience of reading physical papers, particularly the editorial and op-ed sections, which they use to improve their vocabulary and gain deeper knowledge. For scanning headlines and quick, daily updates, they rely heavily on Inshorts, a popular Indian news app that summarizes news stories from various sources into short, sixty-word bites. They also access news via social media and occasionally visit newspaper websites when away from home.

AI chatbot usage and information needs: A ‘wide net’ prompting strategy

To meet their information needs, the interviewee integrates AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini into their routine, using them almost every day. Their primary motivations for using AI chatbots are time efficiency and the ability to summarize vast amounts of information quickly. They employ a ‘wide net’ prompting strategy, typically asking the AI chatbot to generate lists (see example). From these generated lists, they select specific stories of interest to dig deeper through follow-up requests for detailed summaries. They finalize this process by asking the AI chatbots to condense information such as dates and headlines into a concise paragraph to explicitly aid in memory retention.

AI chatbot preferences: ChatGPT, the Go-to App

They primarily use ChatGPT and Gemini on mobile, while occasionally using Claude and Perplexity on their laptop. They consider ChatGPT their go-to app, noting they have used it the longest, find it easy to use and subscribe to the paid version of the app. Notably, they prefer Gemini for its ‘deep research’ feature, which they utilize for academic projects and reports. They specifically value Gemini’s ability to produce organized outcomes, such as proper PDFs and flowcharts. In direct comparisons, they noted that Gemini often provides a better information hierarchy with useful sub-points, whereas ChatGPT sometimes offers better general overviews for broad topics.

Trust and verification: Diverse curation

The interviewee generally trusts AI chatbots to provide a balanced view by curating information from multiple sources, contrasting this with the singular perspective of a specific journalist. However, they remain skeptical in specific contexts. For instance, they expressed distrust toward Indian government data regarding politically contentious topics like climate change, preferring international sources instead. Furthermore, within their professional domain of law, they have detected inaccuracies where the AI chatbot fabricated facts about case laws, which led them to verify such data against books and Google searches.

This example shows the interviewee engaging in “snackable” consumption of news, prioritizing breadth over depth. Their interaction patterns are characterized by frequent requests for “Top 10 international news,” “Top 5 sports news” and similar short lists.

Indian user

Today news

ChatGPT

Today’s major headlines

1. India-US Trade Deal Nearing

India and United States are reportedly close to a trade agreement that would reduce U.S. tariffs on Indian imports to about 15-16% (down from much higher levels.

Why this matters:

• Lower tariffs can boost Indian exports to the US, helping Indian industries.

• For the U.S., It signals a potential shift in trade strategy with India.

[…]

Indian user

Give me today’s major in international news

ChatGPT

Here’s one major piece of international news today:

Kyiv, Ukraine: Russian Missiles & Drones Strike
• Overnight, Russian missile and drone attacks struck Kyiv and surrounding regions, killing six people (including two children) and causing widespread power outages across Ukraine.

[…]

Indian user

Can you give me a detailed summary about the Kyiv Ukraine conflict

ChatGPT

Absolutely – here’s a detailed, clear summary of the Kyiv-Ukraine conflict (Russia-Ukraine war) as of October 2025, covering its origins, timeline, key developments, and current status.

[…]

Indian user

Give me a paragraph with all important dates and headlines

ChatGPT

Here’s a compact paragraph summarizing the Russia-Ukraine conflict with all the major dates and key headlines:

The Russia-Ukraine conflict began in 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea and separatists seized parts of Donetsk and Luhansk…

When asked how they feel about the responses, the interviewee said,

I don’t think there are more than ten important news stories daily on a national level, so I think usually one or two or three are most important. So if there’s something that I have a little bit of interest in, then I’ll tell them that. ‘Give me a detailed summary of it,’ or ‘Give me a detailed version of it.’

Case Study 3: The perspective-seeker

This interviewee relies more heavily on AI chatbots for news than anyone else CNTI interviewed in the U.S. They regularly go to Gemini for a quick roundup of headlines, although they also value “quality time with news” when they need to learn about something with direct personal impact, like understanding the pros and cons of a local ballot proposition.

News repertoire and sources: Seeking out multiple ideological perspectives

This interviewee uses a broad repertoire of sources, including news outlet apps with regular push notifications, the social media feeds of friends and family members, conversations with coworkers and Google Gemini. They said they are concerned about bias, but are also particularly interested in getting news from multiple ideological perspectives. Following people they knew on social media means they can evaluate the slant based on what they knew about that other person. They also find it particularly important to get news that informs their individual actions. Specifically, they turn regularly to Gemini for round-ups of what was happening in their zip code and what topics will be on their ballot. 

U.S. user

What’s the latest headlines in [zip code]?

Gemini

The ZIP code [zip] covers the central and downtown area of [city].

Here are some of the latest headlines and recent local news:

Recent Crime & Public Safety:

• Double Murder Case: A man has been charged with the stabbing deaths of his wife and mother-in-law in [city].
• Retail Theft Ring Arrests: Three suspects were recently arrested in connection with a [city] retail theft ring.

[…]

U.S. user

What’s more info on retail theft ring arrests from last question?

Gemini

The organized retail theft ring arrests announced by Attorney General [name] in early 2024 involved a coordinated spree of burglaries that had a significant impact on [city] and the wider [region].

[…]

AI chatbot usage and information needs: staying “informed enough” and seeking “both sides”

For this interviewee, Gemini meets two primary needs. They use it for knowledge, as a way to scan local, national or global headlines and stay broadly familiar with what’s happening around them. “I don’t even know if I’m doing it correctly, but it seems to keep me informed enough,” they reflected. They also use it for context, specifically to understand a broad range of political perspectives. That kind of context is an area where they said they wanted more:

[I wish] there was an app that would give me both sides of the story and it was so unbiased that I knew I could trust it. If it was about the election, it would give me really strong Republicans views and really strong Democrats views and people right in between and then I could read all sides of the story and then I could make my own decision. So I don’t really know of something like that. It seems more like I need to take every source I get with a grain of salt and then form the opinion I want, hoping that I’m getting reliable sources.

AI chatbot preferences: “ChatGPT just doesn’t give you that detail”

Like many other interviewees, this person has a strong preference for one AI chatbot over others. For them, it is Gemini. They had been an early tester of Bard, and “at first, I was like, ‘this is so much work for so little money.’ But then […] I just started getting, ‘wow, this is so much better than Yahoo! or just Googling news.’ You get so much more than just a search engine.” Like others, their preference has grown over time: they found it easy to use from the get-go, have invested time with it and have gotten to a place where it provides information in a format they are used to and comfortable with. Even so, they observed that Gemini is still “not ideal” because it can’t fully anticipate their needs. “It doesn’t know my personality. Gemini doesn’t know that the person that works here has been talking to me so much about a certain proposition and that is particularly important to me. Gemini is not living with me. So I don’t always get what I’m looking for.” 

Trust & verification: “It’s fact-based as opposed to having a lot of opinions or interpretations”

They said they find Gemini more factual than many news sources, and take confidence from the fact that they could look up whether the responses are true. They almost never do so, however. As they described it, “I can literally just say, ‘what’s the biggest headlines in [zip code]?’ and they’ll be listed and I feel like it’s pretty unbiased, unlike certain news channels. You kind of can get both sides of the story and then it also does really good summaries. So instead of getting a humongous article I can also say, ‘can you summarize what you just said?’” Getting short summaries is especially helpful when there’s an overwhelming amount to keep up with.

Case Study 4: The cautious optimist

This interviewee epitomizes “trust but verify” optimism towards AI chatbots. They consider them a “concierge for information” even as they cautioned that they are an “80/20 source.”

News repertoire and sources: Google News “seems to learn my interests”

This interviewee uses Google News as their most important news feed because it serves them information from a range of sources on topics they care about. In fact, their browser homepage is set to Google News. They also pay for a New York Times subscription and two local news outlets in their former hometown, primarily to follow local sports. They’re in a community Facebook group for hyperlocal information, they also watch some TV and they use both ChatGPT and Google AI mode for sports content.

AI chatbot usage and information needs: ChatGPT helps them accomplish things

They use AI chatbots for a range of information needs, most of which fall solidly under ‘acting.’ They showed us their history: in the last few days before their interview, they had asked ChatGPT to calculate their protein intake, to identify the sports programming on a particular channel and to collate reviews of a particular brain health app. During our call, they also asked for advice on a planned home renovation. They even credited ChatGPT with a newfound awareness of the breadth of their hobbies, because ChatGPT makes it easy for them to plan. When they are looking for up-to-date knowledge and understanding, on the other hand, they generally start with Google News.

At one point during the interview, they used Google search (in AI mode) to search for a story that was paywalled. They were hoping to find something they could access on the same topic, but ultimately got the information from an AI chatbot summary instead.

AI chatbot preferences: locked into ChatGPT by virtue of habit and history

This interviewee uses ChatGPT more frequently than other AI chatbots and they explained that this preference was largely due to the time and energy they had already invested. “I use ChatGPT preferentially over Google Gemini, it’s just become a habit. I’ve got history out there. I can go retrieve things. I’m prolific on ChatGPT, plus I have a short-term memory. Always have. And so having this history back there to go search on, it’s like Amazon, you get hooked and you got subscriptions and pretty soon you’re just going back to the same source for things.” At the same time, they trust Google’s AI Mode much more because they find it less willing to speculate: “I haven’t caught Google AI lying to me yet and Chad [sic] has lied to me over and over again with the best of intentions, with the confidence. He reminds me of a neighbor here who lied to me all the time and […] I’m not saying I think of [ChatGPT] as a pathological liar. But I think of ChatGPT as confidently giving me information that I know at times it’s like ‘you’re so wrong.’” They also see AI Mode as enhancing something they were already doing, which they valued. They feel like Google has successfully replaced“links to information so you can go research yourself and figure it out” with“the crib notes, the executive summary.”

Trust & verification: moving beyond “garbage in, garbage out”

It is not uncommon for this interviewee to identify a problem with the responses they receive from ChatGPT based on their own prior knowledge or a topic. In fact, they raised repeated concerns about “garbage in, garbage out.” Interestingly, they were most concerned with the quality of their own prompts and seemed less aware of the quality of information used in training or referenced in the actual reply. To the extent that they raised concerns about inputs beyond their prompt, they focused their frustration on how ChatGPT doesn’t always reference the most recent sources: “It’s hard to give any AI a 10 [on a trust scale] because I’ve learned that, again, ‘garbage in, garbage out.’ Sometimes it’s me thinking I’ve communicated clearly. But also sometimes it’s just, there’s a time lapse.”

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Whether newsrooms are paying enough attention or not, however, many governments are adopting AI strategies, policies and laws. These regulatory attempts rarely directly address journalism and vary dramatically in their frameworks, enforcement capacity and level of international coordination, but they will almost certainly have an impact on journalism and the digital information environment. To understand exactly how regulation is, or could be, impacting journalism, we reviewed 188 national and regional AI strategies, laws and policies that collectively cover more than 99 countries. 

The analysis is structured around the seven regions of the world, as identified by the World Bank — North America, Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe and Central Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia and the Pacific, and South Asia — and around how regulatory activity in each of these regions addresses seven policy components that, based on the research of CNTI and others, are particularly relevant to and likely to impact journalism:

Explore the proposals

CNTI reviewed 188 national and regional AI strategies, laws and policies around the world to determine how they impact journalism. We focused our analysis around how regulatory activity addresses seven policy components that are particularly likely to impact journalism. Use the below map to explore each of the policy documents we reviewed and to see what journalism-related topics they include. Use the column on the left to see which documents mention a specific topic, or click on a country to see the list of its documents and the topics covered in each. 

Key findings: The landscape

The governance of AI is increasingly complex and varies dramatically by country and industry. 

The broad range of governance instruments in play include legally-binding regulation at every level of government, corporate policies, industry standards and many other types of documents. AI applications are being introduced across sectors: some of them, such as banking and health, are already heavily regulated, while others are much more lightly regulated. Even among national-level legislation, there is tremendous diversity in scope: some bills are sweeping and comprehensive, while others comprise small edits to existing laws or address AI in narrowly-defined use cases like online shopping, mammograms or road accidents. Others create new agencies, committees or councils to operationalize vaguely laid out principles. The law-making process varies by country, as do the stakeholders involved. There is also variability in countries’ power to impact technology companies. In some smaller markets, companies may consider pulling out rather than comply with regulations, especially if those regulations are burdensome or do not align with the requirements of larger markets. Furthermore, some countries — the United States among them — have dozens or even hundreds of bills in the pipeline, making it impossible to conduct an exhaustive review. While we offer numbers wherever possible to give a sense of scale and proportion, our research examines the breadth of policies, strategies and laws rather than providing a full audit.

As with all policy proposals, it is important to consider the AI documents we reviewed in their individual country contexts and in relation to pre-existing laws in those countries and regions. Even if journalism or data privacy is not explicitly mentioned in an AI document, for example, existing protections for these rights may supersede new AI proposals. It is also important for policymakers to coordinate with experts to determine whether their AI policy proposals are technologically feasible as they consider replicating the documents reviewed in this paper or originating new AI policy proposals. 

Policies don’t have to mention journalism by name to impact it. 

Twenty of the 188 documents explicitly mentioned “journalist,” “journalism,” “news,” “media” or “news media.”

When these terms do appear, they range from passing references to the field to laws whose primary concern is the practice of journalism. This by no means is a suggestion that more documents should directly name journalism. Calling out the journalism field in policy documents frequently has its own pitfalls: Once governments define “journalism” or “news,” those definitions can be weaponized against the news media. Instead, it is important that policymakers are aware of and think through potential impacts of directly naming or not naming journalism and news. 

• Four documents (from Bahrain, Chile, Costa Rica and Kenya) identify journalists or media workers as stakeholders, but go no further. Three others (from the African Union, Panama and Serbia) specifically identify the field of journalism as an important audience for educational materials and reskilling. 
• Four documents (from Algeria, Egypt, Lesotho and Sri Lanka) emphasize the importance of news media as a communications channel for public awareness campaigns, with varying assumptions about editorial independence from government. 
• One proposed law (from Ecuador) attempts to intervene in polarization and fragmentation by requiring providers of content recommendation algorithms to include content from a broad range of media outlets.
• Five different bills and laws exempt journalism from specific provisions: China’s Interim Measures on Generative AI say that other journalism laws supersede it; three U.S. bills would exempt news media from specific restrictions on deepfakes in the context of both reporting and advertisements (Illinois, New Hampshire and South Dakota); and Brazil’s proposed law grants exemptions to some forms of copyright violation for journalistic or research purposes..
• Two proposed laws — both from the U.S., one in New Jersey and one in New York — would specifically regulate the use of AI in journalism.

Transparency and data protection are the two topic areas (among the seven studied) that come up most frequently.

Of the 188 AI strategies, laws and policies we reviewed, 124 addressed transparency and accountability; 107 addressed data protection and privacy; 92 addressed algorithmic discrimination and bias; 76 addressed public information and awareness about AI; 64 addressed manipulated or synthetic content; 49 addressed intellectual property and copyright; and 19 addressed freedom of speech and expression. Each document could be counted in multiple categories. In all seven regions, either transparency or data protection was the most common topic. In every region, more than half of the documents we reviewed addressed transparency and accountability. Likewise, in every region, more than half of the documents we reviewed addressed privacy and data protection, with the exception of North America, which only featured the topic in eight of the 29 documents we examined. The emphasis on transparency likely responds to a key challenge for accountability: the opaqueness of many AI systems leaves even their creators without a full understanding of how they work, let alone policymakers. Meanwhile, the salience of data privacy is to be expected, since it has been a key issue in technology governance over the last ten years. At least four out of five people around the world are protected by a national-level privacy law. 

Freedom of speech and expression come up least often.

While policymakers regularly express concern about AI’s impacts on the information environment, references to freedom of speech and expression are infrequent across regions. In fact, these topics did not appear in any documents we reviewed from either the Middle East and North Africa or Sub-Saharan Africa. Moreover, the documents we reviewed addressed two very different concerns: Some, like Malaysia, addressed the possibility that using AI would threaten fundamental human freedoms, while others, like Venezuela, addressed the possibility that regulating AI would threaten human freedoms. The latter was more common in the United States than elsewhere, but both issues came up across regions. The EU’s AI Act highlights both concerns, emphasizing that AI systems can violate fundamental freedoms but also that labeling obligations do not restrict free speech. One resolution, New Jersey’s AR 158, instead focuses on freedom of speech about AI by urging technology companies to embrace stronger whistleblower protections. We note that the absence of explicit language about freedom of speech or expression does not necessarily indicate an absence of concern; in many countries, these freedoms are guaranteed in foundational legal documents, like constitutions, that supersede all other laws or policies. The certainty around the upholding of those foundational documents, however, cannot be guaranteed.

Key findings: The topics

Freedom of speech and expression

Out of the 188 documents we reviewed, 20 address freedom of speech and expression directly.

CNTI’s analysis finds that when freedom of speech and expression are recognized, it generally has positive implications for journalism. This demonstrates an understanding of the importance of this freedom and an acknowledgement of how AI can impact it. Because it is often only included in preambles or as a guiding principle, however, these policies often do not specify how they are going to protect these rights. Examining the range of existing levels of press freedom, both across and within regions, is foundational to understanding how these policies may be used.

Of the few concrete policies about freedom of speech and expression, most are likely to benefit journalism. Several countries ban AI systems that do not respect freedom of expression, but they do not specify how or what uses of AI systems would fail to respect fundamental freedom. For example, Argentina’s Bill 2573-S-2024 prohibits the use of AI “which violates fundamental human rights such as privacy, freedom of expression, equality or human dignity.” Other countries recognize trade-offs: In order to ensure that algorithmic content recommendation does not violate freedom of expression, Ecuador’s Organic Law for the Regulation & Promotion of AI in Ecuador requires clear terms and conditions, human supervision, accountability reports and an appeals process. These provisions would make it more difficult for journalists to be subject to censorship at the hands of an overly conservative algorithm. 

Manipulated or synthetic content

Of the 188 documents we reviewed, 64 address manipulated or synthetic content directly. At least two documents from each region contain provisions about this issue.

CNTI’s analysis finds that attempts to prevent the spread of false information and highlight the provenance of information are broadly positive for journalism and the information space — but these efforts must be scrutinized to ensure they do not infringe on freedom of expression. 

For example, some proposals may protect journalists from technology-facilitated gender-based violence and other forms of AI-generated harassment. When a journalist is targeted with a deepfake, it can push them into silence, decrease their credibility and even drive them to leave the field. By banning explicit deepfakes, the United States’ Take It Down Act, Mexico’s Ley Olimpia and Bahrain’s draft AI Regulation Law would prohibit such attacks on journalists. 

However, some of these proposals may end up penalizing journalists. For example, the United States’ 2025 Take It Down Act prohibits the nonconsensual publication of both authentic and AI-generated intimate images and requires online platforms to remove such images. It does not, however, include safeguards against bad-faith or fraudulent takedown requests, which some advocates say could be used to wrongly censor journalism. 

Moreover, some provisions could potentially be used by the government to target journalists for reporting it does not like. Bahrain’s draft AI Regulation Law would prohibit using AI to “upload or install personal images that damage an individual’s reputation or dignity; [… or …] modify, edit, or tamper with textual, audio, or visual content related to individuals without their explicit consent.” These provisions are sufficiently vague that they could potentially be weaponized against journalists for innocuous changes, like editing the levels of an audio recording to make it clearer.

Finally, some proposals could impact journalists’ ability to use AI to protect their sources. The Dominican Republic’s proposed Bill 563, for example, would ban the use of deepfakes to alter videos and punish violators with prison terms and hefty fines. Because it does not include an exception for journalism, even when it is labeled, this could prevent journalists from using AI for legitimate purposes, such as to create an avatar of a source who wishes to remain anonymous for their safety.

Many laws also treat synthetic audio, images and video differently than synthetic text, increasing complexity in this space.

Algorithmic discrimination and bias

Out of the 188 documents we reviewed, 92 address algorithmic discrimination and bias directly. 

Some laws would limit the tools that news organizations can use for decision-making, but these laws would not uniquely impact this sector — they typically focus on the use of AI tools for hiring and other consequential decisions, and would apply universally. News organizations would simply have to comply with these regulations.

However, policies that focus on bias in content recommendation systems could potentially have strong impacts on the reach of journalistic content. Content recommendation systems impact the content people see online, especially on social media platforms. Some news organizations also use them to suggest content to audiences. If social media platforms are required to recommend a diversity of sources and opinions, this would impact the reach of journalistic content, but it’s hard to tell if it will extend or limit that reach. Some AI policies — particularly in the EU — would limit the recommender tools used by social media platforms, but not by news organizations themselves, making the impacts unpredictable. Elsewhere, such as in Ecuador, provisions would require news organizations to scrutinize their personalization or content delivery tools, such as AI-powered, customizable homepages.

Other documents, such as those in Bangladesh and Lesotho, would push journalists and newsrooms to be more cognizant of biases in tools they use to analyze data or create content, especially if these provisions require representative or diverse training data. Because journalists already prioritize objectivity, such awareness falls under good journalistic practice and is unlikely to penalize journalists.

Looking beyond journalistic uses of AI, some proposals create registries and audits, which may facilitate journalists’ ability to conduct accountability reporting on AI more broadly. For example, Lesotho’s Draft Artificial Intelligence Policy and Implementation Plan calls on the country’s AI regulator and policymakers to develop “bias mitigation programs,” by mandating bias audits, providing open-source tools for bias mitigation and detection, and training developers and other stakeholders on bias prevention. This could grant journalists greater insight into how these technologies work, thus improving their reporting capability and increasing public accountability. It could also make it easier for them to select appropriate tools for their professional use.

Intellectual property and copyright

Out of the 188 documents we reviewed, 49 address intellectual property and copyright directly. At least three documents from each region included this policy component.

Copyright and intellectual property regulations are particularly complicated because different countries’ laws are incompatible with each other, and few have reckoned with major shifts in distribution made possible by the internet. 

We found that some bills and laws require licensing and compensation for the use of copyrighted material to train AI models. Colombia’s Bill 293 states that beyond an exception for scientific uses, developers cannot use copyrighted content to train AI without prior and explicit consent. On the other hand, the Digital Single Market Directive of the EU AI Act, for example, does allow copyright holders to ‘opt-out’ of their content being used as training data for commercial purposes. The bill in Colombia also gives copyright collectives the right to authorize, prohibit, or restrict the use of works under their management, and they can demand just and equitable remuneration in order to license that use. These legal provisions will likely have positive financial impacts for journalism producers if they can be enforced.

At the same time, a number of documents mention the importance of protecting existing copyright and intellectual property laws without necessarily specifying how AI systems — particularly those using data in training models — fit into these legal foundations, let alone offering a comprehensive assessment of the value of these interactions with digital content. 

For example, China’s generative AI regulation stipulates that both deployers and developers need to comply with intellectual property laws in the country, but it does not specify how AI systems and AI-generated content fit into those laws. 

Japan, on the other hand, takes one of the most permissive stances, allowing the use of copyrighted works for AI training regardless of purpose, so long as it does not unreasonably prejudice the rights-holder’s interests. These divergent approaches raise the issue of interoperability when models are trained globally and deployed across borders. 

The matter of intellectual property and AI is far from settled, though. In November 2025, a court in the United Kingdom found that AI models are subject to copyright infringement claims; however, the lawsuit did not answer the question of whether using copyrighted materials to train AI models falls within the U.K.’s “fair dealing” provisions. Courts in the United States have taken differing views, with two judges in California ruling that AI companies’ use of copyrighted materials to train LLMs constitutes “fair use” because the work is “transformative,” albeit with caveats and for different reasons, while a judge in Delaware ruled that a different AI company’s use of copyrighted materials was not “transformative” and, thus, did not meet “fair use.” This area will continue to evolve as ongoing lawsuits determine whether copyrighted material can be used to train AI models around the world, including in the U.S., India and Japan. 

What is becoming clear is the need to holistically address the value of the various kinds of uses of and interactions with digital content in building AI models and beyond. Current policy approaches tend to dilate between narrow licensing regimes and permissive exceptions, but few adequately balance creators’ rights, developers’ needs and the public interest, let alone the vast array of content itself. 

Transparency and accountability

Out of the 188 documents we reviewed, 124 address transparency and accountability directly. At least three documents from each region included this policy component.

CNTI’s analysis finds that their impact on journalism will likely vary depending on whether transparency obligations fall more heavily on developers or deployers. If they fall on developers, such as in Malaysia, it will be easier for journalists to assess whether third-party tools are valuable to their work; if they fall on deployers, like in this Argentine proposal, journalists, as deployers, would be held responsible for choices made by third-party companies which could lead to greater attentiveness among journalists, and, if not, to unanticipated lawsuits. Several documents, however, fall somewhere in between. The United Arab Emirates’ AI Ethics Guide, for example, states that “accountability for the outcomes of an AI system lies not with the system itself but is apportioned between those who design, develop and deploy it,” meaning journalists could be held accountable at any stage of the process.

We also found that, in general, transparency requirements can make it easier for journalists to report across a range of topics and sectors. For example, California’s AI Transparency Act requires transparency on the data used to train AI models, which would increase public understanding of the tools and, thus, allow journalists to better assess these models.

Some proposals would also require news organizations to label AI-generated content to ensure the public recognizes when it is being used. New York’s proposed Senate Bill S6748, for example, would require publications to “conspicuously” identify at the top of a page or webpage when AI is used to either partially or wholly create an article, image, video or other piece of content. Such requirements could potentially be a form of “compelled speech” or could reduce trust in the content. 

Data protection and privacy 

Out of the 188 documents we reviewed, 107 address data protection and privacy directly.

AI systems and tools are trained on vast quantities of data, and many countries have comprehensive privacy legislation in place that will interact with AI regulation in complex ways.

AI legislation, policies and strategies that address data protection and privacy typically do not consider the specific needs of journalists, who require access to sensitive data for investigative reporting. Bangladesh’s National Artificial Intelligence Policy, for example, states that “personal data usage will require valid consent, notice, and the option to revoke.” Requiring journalists to receive consent before using personal details, however, could inhibit investigative reporting on corruption, human rights abuses and more, given that the politicians, business leaders and others in question would likely not grant consent for their data to be used.

On the other hand, CNTI’s analysis finds that proposals and laws that ban the use of AI for surveillance, as some countries have contemplated, would likely improve the safety of journalists and their sources. For example, the EU AI Act bans AI systems that “create or expand facial recognition databases through the untargeted scraping of facial images from the internet or CCTV footage.” While this represents a step in the right direction, the law does have exemptions for national security. Some countries have taken advantage of this; Hungary, for example, allowed the police to use biometric surveillance to identify participants in LGBTQIA+ public events. 

Public information and awareness

Out of the 188 documents we reviewed, 76 address this issue directly. At least two documents from each region directly touch on this issue.

Many provisions for broad public awareness include journalists among their audiences, providing up-to-date sociotechnical knowledge that could inform stronger reporting. For example, Serbia’s AI strategy includes plans to organize seminars on AI, information security and big data specifically for journalists. Other policies offer similar information to all adults. 

Documents that recognize the importance of journalism as a vehicle for public awareness are varied in their strategies. Lesotho’s draft policy encourages stakeholders to do outreach with a diverse spectrum of media outlets, acknowledging the importance of news without raising concerns about press independence. On the other hand, Egypt’s strategy expressly calls on the media to share “positive news of AI,” perhaps suggesting a bid to influence coverage. No document we reviewed calls for governments to spend advertising dollars to place public awareness campaigns in news media.

Recommendations

The inclusion or exclusion of these seven topics does not necessarily make a proposal “bad” or “good” overall or for journalism and the digital information space. There are many important considerations for AI policy proposals, of which journalism is just one. It is one, though, that CNTI finds incredibly important to functioning societies.

If an independent, diverse news media and open internet are not protected in the AI era, these new regulations could potentially criminalize journalism, threaten news business models, contribute to information disorder and prevent the public from accessing a diversity of fact-based news. The solution is not to call out journalism by name in every AI proposal, as that can have unintended consequences for the field, but it is essential that policymakers see journalists as important stakeholders in AI discussions and consider journalism’s viability as they develop future proposals. Likewise, it is important that news organizations and journalists see themselves as key stakeholders and thoroughly engage in thinking through and discussing the future of AI regulation.

The analysis surfaces a few key areas in need of specific policy attention: 

1. 1. In AI proposals that address manipulated content, it is important that policymakers work towards methods that protect certain journalistic uses in ways that do not enable government censorship or determination of who is or is not a journalist. This is far from an easy task and may mean the best path is no legal policy at all. Either way, it is critical to fully think through. Legislative efforts to prevent the spread of disinformation can sometimes have unintended consequences for journalism. For example, legislation that regulates the provision and sharing of manipulated content but does not include exceptions for journalism can lead to journalists being targeted for allegedly “spreading disinformation” for reporting on the existence of false information, such as a deepfake of an elected official, for using AI-manipulated content (like AI-generated avatars or voice-altered audio) to protect a source, or for covering information that those in power do not want covered. While not legally feasible in the U.S., carve outs for journalists in other countries could protect an independent news media, as well as a source’s right to privacy and willingness to share. But such carve outs, if not crafted extremely carefully, could also easily lead to greater censorship and criminalization. This takes coordinated, thoughtful deliberation. Alongside these discussions, journalists and news organizations should determine how best to convey their use of AI to the public, whether through labeling, watermarking or something else. 

2. 2. Bias audits and transparency measures are best implemented before a tool is deployed. To date, bias audits and transparency measures have often been reactions to issues that arise after deployment rather than components required prior to public launch. While not all issues can be identified in advance, more can be done before a tool is deployed, especially as these systems and our understanding of them matures. Policy can help lay out foundational requirements for audits, as well as for transparency, around how they are conducted and how issues are addressed, particularly for technology companies whose algorithms can have a social impact (i.e. if the algorithm uses personal data and makes or influences decisions that may have a significant impact on society or an individual). 

3. 3. Policymakers should ensure that AI working groups include journalism producers, product teams and engineers, alongside AI technologists, researchers, civil society and other relevant stakeholders. Policymakers face the challenge of attempting to legislate a technology that is constantly evolving and has wide-reaching consequences. As such, it is important that they meet with diverse stakeholders to ensure that they properly understand the technology they are trying to govern, as well as the consequences that both the technology and potential legislation could have on society more broadly. It is also critical that all at the table, including journalism leaders, are fully read-in and share the goal of collaboration, as such cooperation leads to the most optimal societal solutions. Expanded regional and international collaboration would also be valuable as AI regulation is a global challenge with cross-border implications. 

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Monica Attard, Charlie Beckett, Niamh Burns, Claudia Del Pozo, Mohamed Farahat, Megan Gray, Assane Gueye, Jhalak Kakkar, Ashkhen Kazaryan, Tanit Koch, Prabhat Mishra, Amy Mitchell and Daniela Rojas for their thoughtful feedback on this report. 

The authors also extend their gratitude to Greta Alquist for editing this report, Jonathon Berlin and Ryan Marx for designing the graphics and maps, Kurt Cunningham for creating the web design and the team at CETRA for their translation work. 

The post Journalism’s New Frontier: An Analysis of Global AI Policy Proposals and Their Impacts on Journalism appeared first on Center for News, Technology & Innovation.

On October 28 and 29, 2025, the Center for News, Technology and Innovation and Thomson Media brought together more than 35 journalists, product specialists and newsroom leaders from the Western Balkans and Central Europe in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, for “Journalism and AI: Building Resilient Newsrooms for the Future” — the second collaboration between the organizations. Over the course of two days, participants shared their struggles and successes integrating AI into their work, took master classes on AI prompt engineering and contemplated the question, “How do we harness AI’s power to build a strong future for our work?”

The answer that emerged was both multifaceted and promising. The journalists in this region are leaning in and figuring out what works best and what does not work for them and their audiences, and what they can learn from each other — and they often are managing with only small budgets and staff sizes.  

At one point during the workshop, CNTI Chair Craig Forman explained, “I wrote for the Wall Street Journal when I was a foreign correspondent, 30-ish years ago on the eve of the breakup of Yugoslavia.” He continued, “I bring that up, not to bring any ill will or bad memories, but to say that when I [was reporting in the region], it was unthinkable that we might be here today. Unthinkable. And as you all know, we have to think about the unthinkable, not only in the bad way, but in the good way.”

Forman’s words resonated deeply in a city once synonymous with war reporting but now hosting a discussion about how technology could safeguard truth and foster resilience in newsrooms.

AI Will Not Take Journalists’ Jobs, But Someone Who Uses AI Will

David Caswell, drawing on years of experience developing AI storytelling systems, kicked off the workshop with a powerful and straightforward insight: “We should take AI seriously because the trajectory of improvements has been radical.” He continued, “The effect of [AI investment] will be significant.”

This isn’t about jumping on every technological bandwagon or tacking the latest tool onto one’s current product. It’s about recognizing that structured storytelling models and AI-assisted workflows represent a practical evolution in how newsrooms operate. The question isn’t whether AI will change journalism, but whether journalism will adapt intelligently.

As Niamh Burns from Enders Analysis said, “AI will undoubtedly change how news is created, distributed, noticed and funded. This is really a moment where you [journalists] should all be thinking about what your value add is.”

These aren’t abstract problems for newsrooms in Sarajevo, Belgrade or Pristina. They’re immediate challenges that require practical solutions.

Sami Kçiku, a project manager at the independent news company Koha Group in Kosovo, shared that his newsroom was initially fearful of AI. Several other participants voiced similar stories of journalists worried they would be replaced by AI and, therefore, reluctant to try out new technology, with generational divides also at play. 

Kçiku offered the simple yet disarming advice that he gave to his team: “You won’t be replaced by AI, but you will be replaced by someone who uses AI.” Koha has since implemented a custom GPT to improve SEO and social media practices, and they use an external AI tool for transcription.

Journalists Must Begin to See Themselves as Innovators

As newsrooms attempt to address the tension between embracing AI and fearing it, Caswell recommended a calm but intentional approach of “innovation, adoption, diffusion.” 

It is important that innovation comes from collaboration between the editorial and product teams, and, as Burns pointed out, innovation should prioritize measurable success instead of bandwagon adoption. Nikola Bačić, editor-in-chief at Hercegovina Info, shared that his team has one AI meeting every week, where the editorial staff meets with the IT staff to discuss needs and potential solutions. 

Once a tool is created, newsrooms must take the time to properly train the entire staff on a technology to ensure they have the skills needed to adopt the AI tool, if they so choose. Tatjana Sekulic, an executive multimedia producer at N1 in Bosnia and Herzegovina, told the group that uptake at her outlet is mixed; some journalists are completely against AI, while others are overly reliant on it. As a result, the newsroom has implemented training for everyone to ensure they all have the skills to use AI responsibly. 

“It’s very important to teach them how to use AI in the proper way,” Sekulic said. “We’re investing in our knowledge and our people.”

Finally, following implementation, it is important to continue conversations to diffuse broader adoption of the technology. Veronika Munk, director of innovations at Denník N in Slovakia, explained that while full newsroom training sessions did not always achieve the desired impact for her team, they still provided useful insights. Over time, the organization found that complementing these larger trainings with a more targeted approach worked better. When Denník N introduces a new tool, they now focus on training smaller groups within the team or on one-on-one micro-trainings. These trained editors and reporters can then gradually share their knowledge with other colleagues. She also emphasized that the organization’s use of AI always involves human oversight.

While participants responded to this discussion with enthusiasm, some relayed concerns about the cost of implementing AI tools in newsrooms with already thin budgets. 

Damjan Dano, a tech entrepreneur from North Macedonia, explained that creating customized AI tools is not the only option; instead, there are a plethora of existing, inexpensive AI tools that newsrooms can use to support their work. Dano led participants through an exercise where they laid out their AI wish lists, and he shared a variety of existing tools that could be a solution to some of their needs. Frase, for example, can help with SEO optimization, and Asana AI can help manage newsroom workflows.  

“AI is a great tool, not your substitution,” he reminded participants. “Your job is safe, but you have to use the tools that exist today.”

These discussions came with a crucial caveat: Journalism’s future depends on “adaptability, but not at the expense of ethics,” Caro Kriel, chief executive of Thomson Foundation, said.

Ethics and Audience Relations Must Be a Core Part of Newsrooms’ AI Strategies

Another key theme over the two days of discussions was that AI should augment human judgment, not replace it. Newsrooms need to ensure their use of AI is driven by the values and ethics they espouse. It should enable and empower journalists to do their best work, to report relevant, important news and to deliver it to audiences effectively.

Marius Dragomir, director of the Media and Journalism Research Center, reminded participants that technology questions are never just technical. They’re about values, accountability and the social contract between journalists and their audiences. Every AI implementation carries an ethical weight that newsrooms must acknowledge and address.

“The trust of our audience is our highest value. To preserve this trust, we must be honest and transparent,” Vesna Ivanovska-Ilievska, co-founder and editor-in-chief of Umno.mk, said. 

In a session on AI, ethics and trust, Branislava Lovre, co-founder of AImpactful, noted that newsrooms can increase audience trust by communicating about their uses of AI clearly and effectively. 

As CNTI’s global AI Research Working Group has written, there is not one rule book or exact labeling technique that newsrooms should follow. Instead, audiences, like journalists, are still getting used to AI. What matters most is that journalists and their organizations are transparent about their use of AI and carry out a dialogue with audiences about what that means.

It is not enough to simply have an AI policy or guideline, Erjon Curraj, a digital transformation expert from Albania, cautioned. Newsrooms must implement these policies consistently and ensure their staff is aware of them, too.

“This isn’t just about disclosure,” Lovre concluded. “This is our unique chance to lead by example. Social media networks are overwhelmed by AI-generated content, and if we don’t try to explain to our audience what is happening, we won’t be in a good place in one or two years.” 

Journalism Producers Need to Pay Close Attention to Public Policy Related to AI

Participants also discussed how policies and government regulations can impact media freedom and ethics. 

Ana Toskić from Partners Serbia and Emily Wright from CNTI highlighted the potential impacts of EU digital laws, especially the AI Act and the Digital Services Act, on journalism in the Western Balkans. They discussed how in closed or partially closed media environments, where journalists rely on social media platforms to share stories, laws like the Digital Services Act will have a significant impact, especially when regulatory bodies do not operate separately from the government and can misuse the laws to stifle independent reporting. 

The pair further explained that media organizations located within the EU, and those in EU candidate states, will have to adhere to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the AI Act when using AI in their operations. 

Gábor Kardos, CEO of the Hungarian publisher Magyar Jeti Zrt., emphasized the importance of staying on top of regulatory activity, especially in autocratic-leaning countries where independent media is the minority amongst state-controlled media. 

“Even if these regulations were created perfectly…. the state will always have the power to abuse them. And that’s the reason I’m advocating for better regulation,” Kardos said. “But we, as publishers, need to be aware that that’s not the thing that’s going to protect us. We as a community have to protect each other and ourselves, and be innovative and be faster than regulation can ever be.” 

Journalists Can Use AI to Help Address Challenges in the Information Environment 

In an era where press freedom is at risk, synthetic content floods our feeds and deepfakes grow more convincing by the day, journalists face an unprecedented challenge. Journalists are not just competing for attention anymore; they’re fighting for the very concept of verifiable truth.

The twist is that while AI can exacerbate some of the problems, it can also be part of the solution. Workshop participants recognized that AI tools could help newsrooms verify information faster and more thoroughly than ever before, allow them to reach new audiences and help them create new forms of content. The key lies in thinking ahead. 

“If we want to think strategically, we cannot focus only on the shortest term,” Kardos said. “It [the short term] does not matter if in five or seven years, it’s not journalism or AI, it’s humanity that will be in question. We need to focus on what happens in the midterm, within a few years.” 

Participants from several countries offered case studies of creative ways they have implemented AI into their workstreams, even on small teams with limited budgets that face pressure from their governments. 

The Center for Investigative Journalism of Serbia, which has a team of only 10 people, created a custom large language model (LLM) to analyze nearly 10 million pieces of data on wait times in Serbia’s healthcare system. The AI system allowed Ivana Milosavljević and her fellow reporters to analyze large amounts of data in record time. She noted, importantly, that a human reviewed all outputs to ensure accuracy, which was time-consuming, but she shared that AI enabled the team to reach and visualize conclusions in new and efficient ways. Initially tested on publicly available data, Milosavljević said the LLM system will be especially valuable for analyzing confidential data.

Ján Trangel, AI implementation lead at Ringier Slovakia, explained that the outlet has created an AI-driven hate speech moderation system after finding third-party tools ineffective for their language and regional needs. Ringier built custom hardware and an offline LLM — drawing on open-source options like Mistral and Google models — to evaluate messages in real time, classify their severity and support fully customizable moderation policies. The system processes more than 300,000 messages daily, reducing manual review while offering an admin panel for managing labels and decisions. Its offline architecture lets the team experiment freely, compare models and tailor features without depending on external cloud services. 

Vidi Vaka, a Skopje-based outlet with only three full-time reporters, created “KiberFlow,” an AI coworker that transforms the outlet’s reported stories into rap-style videos. KiberFlow uses character-animated performance and social satire to highlight everyday societal problems and has more than 1,000 followers on Instagram. The project is allowing Vidi Vaka to reach a younger audience that usually avoids traditional media in a new and engaging way. 

“For us, AI is not a shortcut; it’s a collaboration,” journalist Angela Petrovska said. “People follow KiberFlow not because it’s AI, but because it tells real stories made by good journalists.”

At Dennik N in Slovakia, Munk and her team explore AI uses on a smaller hiking website they manage. Every Thursday, the team publishes a set of recommended weekend hikes, using AI to assist with suggestions based on weather forecasts and difficulty levels. They have also developed tools for automated image cropping and social media posting. While not all types of tools are tested there, the hiking site provides an environment for experimenting, learning and identifying what might be useful before expanding these solutions to larger platforms at the different outlets in Denník N network.

Participants explained that AI tools are often easy to learn and improve creative flow, but they noted that human editing, cultural context and emotional nuance remain essential to keep the work authentic. Overall, they expressed optimism about the opportunities that AI tools can provide their newsrooms and left the workshop feeling motivated to see themselves as innovators in the news industry.

Conclusion

There’s something fitting about having this conversation in Sarajevo, a city that knows something about resilience in the face of existential challenges. The participants didn’t offer easy answers or technological determinism. Instead, they charted a middle path, one that takes AI seriously without surrendering the core values that make journalism essential.

The future won’t be built by those who reject AI wholesale or embrace it uncritically. It will be built by newsrooms that approach these tools with clear eyes, strong ethics and an unwavering commitment to serving their audiences with verified, trustworthy information.

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