Newsroom Robots

For years, the aggregator model was simple: curate the best journalism from thousands of publishers and send audiences their way. Now that contract is being rewritten, and Yahoo News is one of the most interesting places to watch it happen.In this episode of Newsroom Robots, host Nikita Roy speaks with Kat Downs Mulder, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Yahoo News, about how the platform is layering AI across every surface of a product that reaches an estimated 180 million people in the U.S. alone each month. Kat previously spent more than 14 years at The Washington Post as chief product officer and managing editor before taking on the challenge of modernizing one of the internet's original news destinations.The conversation explores Yahoo's acquisition of Artifact, the AI news app built by Instagram's co-founders, which gave the platform a new recommendation engine that prioritizes time spent reading over clicks. It also digs into Yahoo Scout, the company's new AI answer engine that synthesizes information with rich citations and visual context, and an AI-powered daily audio digest designed to turn personalized news into a listening habit. Each of these products makes Yahoo more useful to its audience, but each also changes the relationship between Yahoo and the publishers whose journalism powers the platform.When an answer engine can deliver what a user needs without a click-through, when an audio digest summarizes a story so well the article never gets opened, and when personalization makes the aggregator the destination instead of the pass-through, the old economics stop working for publishers. Kat is candid that the compensation models haven't been figured out yet, noting that Yahoo is working with the Microsoft Publisher Content Marketplace to develop new frameworks, but that the industry is still writing those rules in real time.She makes a strong case for how Yahoo is approaching this differently, from how Scout prominently surfaces publishers to the rev-share model they operate, and why she believes the quality flywheel they are building actually rewards better journalism. Kat argues that original, distinctive journalism will become more valuable in an AI world because AI agents will seek out what is unique. This episode covers: 03:20 — Why Yahoo acquired Artifact and how it shifted recommendation algorithms 06:20 — The shift from click-based metrics to deeper engagement signals such as session time and retention 08:50 — Inside Yahoo Scout, Yahoo's new AI answer engine built to support publishers and the open web 12:40 — The changing economics of news as AI platforms begin generating answers instead of sending traffic 17:40 — Yahoo's personalized AI-generated audio news digest and why multimodal news experiences matter 22:00 — How Yahoo's editorial and AI teams collaborate on quality control at scale 31:00 — How AI is transforming newsroom product development and prototyping 36:10 — The tension between personalization and journalism's civic responsibility 40:00 — What smaller newsrooms can learn from their AI product playbookSign up for the Newsroom Robots newsletter for episode summaries and insights from host Nikita Roy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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.

Most major newsrooms have now moved beyond early experimentation with AI. The main challenge now is determining how to govern effectively, scale consistently, and strategically position AI across the entire organization—while maintaining public trust as a central priority.This week on Newsroom Robots, host Nikita Roy sits down with Uli Köppen, Chief AI Officer at Bavarian Broadcasting (BR), to talk about what it really looks like to lead AI strategy inside one of Europe’s largest public broadcasting networks.Uli makes a compelling case for why every newsroom should establish a dedicated AI leadership function, backed by an interdisciplinary governance structure. They also dig into a question defining the next phase of AI strategy for many newsrooms: in a world of AI overviews, zero-click search, and agent-driven information retrieval, how do you maintain your brand as a recognizable, trustworthy source? Uli shares why BR opted out of AI crawling and what they are building instead, including a vision for a verified content data pool that could power new products across multiple media organizations.In this episode, they cover:02:09 — What it means to be Chief AI Officer at a public broadcaster06:30 — Why every newsroom needs an interdisciplinary AI board, not just a single AI leader09:06 — The skills newsrooms need to build for an AI-driven environment11:00 — Why reinventing workflows starts before adding any technology16:28 — Inside the Oktoberfest Chatbot and the collaborative content pool powering it23:40 — Using AI for smarter community engagement and real-time moderation26:30 — The personalized audio news briefing that users love and where it’s headed36:00 — How BR’s AI guidelines evolved from broad guardrails to clear, example-based rules41:40 — The strategic question: be part of AI platforms, or build recognizable products of your own?Sign up for the Newsroom Robots newsletter for episode summaries and insights from host Nikita Roy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Melissa Bell, CEO of Chicago Public Media, leads strategy and membership growth. Aron Pilhofer, product leader focused on AI-driven audience and membership features. Mark Chenofsky, Lenfest AI Fellow improving transcription, translation, and archives. David Chivers, Lenfest AI advisor who guided responsible AI adoption. They discuss bringing AI into newsroom workflows, unlocking decades of audio, translation speedups, product choices of build vs buy, and learning from a public AI mistake.

Join Alessandro Alviani, Lead for Generative AI, and Fabian Heckenberger, Managing Editor for AI at Süddeutsche Zeitung, as they explore AI's transformative role in journalism. They discuss developing AI tools tailored for audiences, building trust through transparency, and fostering AI literacy among journalists. The conversation also dives into creating smart features like chatbots for political engagement and real-time risk management for AI tools, ensuring editorial integrity while enhancing reader experience.

Francesco Marconi, co-founder of AppliedXL and former R&D lead at The Wall Street Journal, joins Scott Austin, head of business development at Symbolic.ai and an ex-Wall Street Journal reporter. They discuss how 2025 marked a pivotal shift in AI's role in journalism, evolving from a mere tool to a foundational system. The conversation explores the transition from search to direct answers, the hidden work behind reporting, and the necessity for news organizations to become data-centric. AI's impact on workflows and the importance of human judgment remain crucial in this evolving landscape.

The Philadelphia Inquirer never had an AI engineer on staff until the Lenfest AI Collaborative & Fellowship program changed that.The collaborative is a $5 million partnership between the Lenfest Institute, OpenAI, and Microsoft that placed 10 AI fellows in American newsrooms for two years. These engineers work within the organizations, building tools that solve real newsroom problems.This week on Newsroom Robots, host Nikita Roy sits down with Jim Friedlich, CEO and Executive Director of the Lenfest Institute, David Chivers, lead advisor to the Lenfest AI Collaborative and Matt Boggie, CTO of The Philadelphia Inquirer, to walk through how the program works and what the Inquirer has built as a result.The Inquirer came to the collaborative with an idea to build a full-archive search tool that would let reporters query decades of journalism. They expected it to take 24 months. Within two weeks of a Microsoft hackathon, they had working code. The tool, now called Dewey, searches everything the Inquirer has published since 1978.This episode covers:03:02 — How the Lenfest AI Collaborative got started05:34 — Can newsrooms trust big tech partners?08:33 — How the fellowship works day to day14:52– Inside the Microsoft hackathon that built Dewey in two weeks21:37 — Training journalists to understand LLM limitations24:07 — How AI literacy has changed newsroom culture29:45 – How small newsrooms can get started with AI35:14 — AI answers, search decline, and the future of audience traffic38:15 — Rethinking journalism’s role in an AI-mediated world41:23 — Closing reflections and personal AI useThis episode of Newsroom Robots is supported by the Lenfest Institute for Journalism. Sign up for the Newsroom Robots newsletter for episode summaries and insights from host Nikita Roy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tav Klitgaard, co-founder and CEO of Zetland, an innovative audio-first newsroom in Denmark, shares fascinating insights about GoodTape, an AI transcription tool that started as a solution for journalists. Tav explains how GoodTape transformed from an internal experiment into a profitable product, overcoming challenges in transcription quality through a blend of technology and journalistic standards. He also discusses the lessons learned in AI adoption and the importance of maintaining human connection in journalism, even amidst rising AI tools.

How do you redesign a newsroom’s entire workflow when AI is no longer a single tool, but a collection of agents, voice interfaces, and ambient intelligence changing how journalism gets produced?This week on Newsroom Robots, host Nikita Roy is joined by Markus Franz, Chief Technology Officer at Ippen Digital, one of Germany’s largest digital media networks with more than 80 online news and media portals. This episode was recorded live at the Digital Growth Summit in Stuttgart, where Markus shared how his team is building some of the most forward-looking AI experiments in European media.Markus leads Ippen Digital’s Incubator Lab, an innovation unit focused on reimagining how publishing and AI-driven experiences will evolve. With 16 years inside the company, Markus has been central to Ippen’s digital transformation and now leads efforts around multi-agent architectures and building adaptive workflows for the newsroom.In this conversation, Markus breaks down how his lab is experimenting with multi-agent “virtual teams,” voice-first newsroom interfaces, multimodal content production and an ambient AI-powered newsroom where intelligent systems support journalists in real time. He shares what his team has learned from early prototypes, why the biggest challenges are cultural rather than technical, and how news organizations should think about guardrails, platform dependency, and the rise of self-evolving models.This episode covers:02:22 – Why Ippen Digital built an Incubator Lab and how it’s structured as a future-focused R&D unit04:49 – What multi-agent systems look like inside a newsroom9:42 – The case for voice as the next major interface for both journalists and audiences14:41 – The shift from human-in-the-loop to human-on-the-loop workflows17:40 – Guardrails for agent systems: grounding, bounding, editorial policies19:33 – The vision for an ambient newsroom powered by AI companions and real-time intelligence27:31 – Why vendor lock-in and self-evolving LLMs pose new strategic risks30:08 – Multimodal personalization and rethinking how news is experienced34:27 – Why most AI pilots fail and what experimentation looks like in practice49:19 – Markus’s personal AI stack and how he uses these tools day-to-daySign up for the Newsroom Robots newsletter for episode summaries and insights from host Nikita Roy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Olle Zacharison, Head of News AI at BBC News and former Head of AI at Swedish Radio, shares insights on integrating AI in a global newsroom. He unveils the BBC's four-part AI strategy, focusing on productivity boosts and content reformatting. Olle discusses the challenges of applying AI across 42 languages and the importance of collaboration among teams. He highlights innovative use of synthetic voices for personalized news and stresses maintaining editorial integrity in an AI-driven landscape. Olle also emphasizes the BBC's role as a trusted source amidst misinformation.