How AI can free up journalists to do more original reporting

AI in newsrooms has sparked anxiety. Will it replace reporters? Will it erode quality? Will it churn out lifeless copy at scale? These are valid concerns—but they also miss a crucial opportunity. Because if implemented thoughtfully, AI won’t just automate parts of journalism—it can amplify it.

The most valuable journalism has always come from human insight: original reporting, source development, investigative work, deep dives into complex issues. These take time—something most journalists are in short supply of. Used strategically, AI can help reporters reclaim that time by taking low-value, repetitive tasks off their plates.

The result? Less grunt work. More journalism.

Automating the underbrush

Newsrooms are filled with invisible work: transcribing interviews, reformatting press releases, sorting through data dumps, rewriting headlines for SEO, resizing images for different channels. None of this is why anyone becomes a journalist. But all of it eats into time that could be spent chasing a lead or developing a story.

AI tools—already integrated into many CMS platforms—can now handle much of this efficiently:

• Transcribing interviews with near-perfect accuracy

• Summarising long documents or meeting notes

• Extracting quotes and tagging content

• Generating image captions or alt text

• Auto-formatting for newsletters or social snippets

These aren’t glamorous tasks. But they’re necessary. When machines take them on, reporters gain breathing room to focus on what only they can do: original, context-rich, human-driven reporting.

AI as a research assistant, not a reporter

AI can also speed up the early stages of reporting. Tools that surface background material, find related stories, or provide timeline summaries can give journalists a head start—especially on complex beats with lots of moving parts.

Importantly, this doesn’t mean AI replaces research. It supplements it. A smart reporter will still verify every fact, follow every lead, and interrogate every source. But with AI surfacing useful context quickly, the path from idea to insight becomes faster—and richer.

Think of AI as a research assistant that never sleeps. The human still drives the story. The AI just clears the way.

Enabling deeper local and investigative work

One of the biggest casualties of newsroom cutbacks has been local journalism. There are still stories to tell—but fewer resources to tell them. Here, AI can play a pivotal role.

By automating templated stories (e.g. weather updates, sports results, public meeting summaries), AI can help smaller newsrooms cover the basics while freeing up staff to pursue more ambitious stories. Some local outlets are already using AI to produce automated updates, allowing journalists to dig into housing policy, environmental issues, or local government accountability.

Similarly, in investigative work, AI tools can comb through massive datasets, flag anomalies, and identify patterns that warrant further digging. They don’t do the reporting—but they widen the aperture for what’s possible within limited timeframes.

Redefining the newsroom workflow

To realise these benefits, publishers need to integrate AI not as a novelty, but as part of the editorial workflow. That means:

• Training reporters to use AI tools critically—not just accept output at face value

• Embedding AI into routine tasks, from planning to production

• Setting clear editorial standards for what AI can and cannot do

• Using saved time to actively prioritise original, high-impact reporting

It also means tracking how time savings translate into better outcomes. Are journalists producing more exclusive stories? Are they following leads that would’ve been dropped otherwise? Are they spending more time with sources, rather than screens?

AI can’t do journalism. But it can give journalists the time and space to do it better.

A moment to reclaim the craft

Amid the hype and fear around AI, it’s easy to forget why people become journalists in the first place: to uncover the truth, tell untold stories, and hold power to account. These things are not under threat from AI. They’re under threat from burnout, understaffing, and the constant pressure to do more with less.

AI offers a rare opportunity to reverse that trend—not by replacing journalists, but by supporting them.

Used thoughtfully, AI won’t deskill journalism. It will re-skill it, refocusing editorial energy on the stories that matter most.

Because when the machines do the boring bits, the humans can finally get back to chasing the truth.