The Brian Lehrer Show The Future of AI in Journalism
Apr 7, 2026
Margaret Sullivan, Guardian columnist and media ethicist, and Isabella Simonetti, Wall Street Journal media reporter, discuss AI's growing role in newsrooms. They explore AI-generated drafts, where to draw ethical lines, disclosure practices, local news use, union concerns, hallucinations and bias, and how AI is used more as an editor than a writer.
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AI Reshapes Which Parts Of Journalism Are Human
- AI can handle tasks like first drafts, summarizing documents, editing copy, and suggesting angles, while humans still do reporting and building source trust.
- Those automated tasks are already changing newsroom boundaries and prompting debates about what counts as journalism.
Fortune Reporter Uses AI To Draft Stories
- Nick Lichtenberg at Fortune used AI to generate drafts by uploading press releases and analyst notes into tools like Perplexity or Notebook LM.
- He prompts the tool with a headline, edits the returned 600-word draft, adds reporting, and publishes it quickly.
Local Newsroom Uses AI To Expand County Coverage
- Cleveland.com used AI to scrape local sites and generate tips, which reporters then pursue to expand coverage of undercovered counties.
- The editor argued AI turned poor drafts usable and helped cover counties previously ignored in Ohio.