CNN, The New York Times, Reuters, and Hacks/Hackers on AI in the Newsroom: In Conversation with Arlyn Gajilan, Burt Herman, Ryan Struyk and Rubina Madan Fillion

Mar 2, 2026

Guest

Burt Herman

Burt Herman, co-founder of Hacks/Hackers who helps small newsrooms build practical AI workflows; Arlyn Gajilan, Reuters editor leading AI for drafting, translation and metadata; Rubina Madan Fillion, NYT editor focused on AI investigative tools and governance; Ryan Struyk, CNN director applying AI to reporting and video search. They discuss AI in newsroom workflows, liquid content and versioning, local news advantages, metadata and rapid prototyping.

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INSIGHT

AI Powers Semantic Search And Video Workflow

CNN uses AI for document and video discoverability, semantic search, and transforming horizontal video to vertical for new platforms.
Ryan Struyk highlighted AI identifying key moments and speeding video workflows for a shorts section and streaming service.

INSIGHT

AI Accelerates Investigations And Beat Monitoring

The New York Times applies AI to investigative workflows and to scale monitoring of influencer ecosystems like the Manosphere.
Rubina Madan Fillion described CheatSheet and the daily Manosphere Report that summarizes podcasts and YouTube content for reporters.

INSIGHT

Agency Scale Gains From AI Speed And Metadata

Reuters compressed drafting and production speed dramatically, cutting packaging time from minutes to ~40 seconds and feature cycles from months to weeks.
Arlyn Gajilan noted 57-language auto-transcription, scene detection, and soon auto rough-cut assembly for clients.

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AI is settling in as infrastructure within newsrooms, a layer quietly reshaping how journalists discover information, how stories move through production, and how audiences increasingly expect news to reach them.

In this episode of Newsroom Robots, recorded live in New York City at TV News Check’s News Tech Forum, host Nikita Roy brings together four industry leaders to examine the tangible ways AI is transforming newsroom operations. The conversation features Ryan Struyk, Director of AI Initiatives at CNN; Rubina Madan Fillion, Associate Editorial Director of AI Initiatives at The New York Times; Arlyn Gajilan, Global Editor of AI Development and Integration at Reuters; and Burt Herman, Co-Founder and Principal of Hacks/Hackers.

The discussion focuses on defining questions for the news industry: Where is AI already delivering real operational impact? How should newsrooms adapt to a world of “liquid content” and AI-mediated distribution? Is human-in-the-loop governance sustainable, or is it already breaking down? As trust in news declines and trust in AI interfaces rises, what becomes journalism’s true competitive advantage?

In this episode, they cover:

03:10 — Where AI is already embedded inside CNN’s newsroom workflows

04:25 — How The New York Times uses AI to power investigative reporting and the “Manosphere Report”

07:30 — How Reuters compressed story production from minutes to seconds and feature development from three months to three weeks

11:44 — Why Hacks/Hackers is urging small newsrooms to think from first principles before adopting AI

15:15 — The rise of liquid content and what it means when audiences reshape journalism into their preferred formats

23:24 — Why local news holds a unique advantage in an AI-mediated information landscape

29:12 — Five years from now: What newsrooms hope they get right

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