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What happens when artificial intelligence meets one of journalism’s most important missions: holding power accountable?
In this episode of The Media Copilot podcast, host Pete Pachal speaks with Rick Hirsch, director of the Collier Prize for State Government Accountability at the University of Florida and former Managing Editor of the Miami Herald. After more than four decades in journalism, Hirsch has witnessed nearly every major transformation in the media industry, from the rise of the internet and social media to today’s AI revolution.
Their conversation explores how AI is changing investigative and accountability journalism, not as a replacement for reporters, but as a powerful tool for uncovering stories, analyzing massive datasets, and helping newsrooms stretch increasingly limited resources.
“I think that’s what motivates most people who do this work. We have the ability to highlight wrongs and give people the information to try to right them.” — Rick Hirsch
Hirsch shares insights from a recent survey of journalists, discusses emerging AI-driven accountability tools being used by organizations like CalMatters, and explains why local government reporting may be one of the areas where AI can make the biggest positive impact.
At the same time, the conversation tackles difficult questions about trust, misinformation, newsroom economics, audience fragmentation, and whether journalism can sustain itself in an AI-mediated information ecosystem.
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Why this matters
While much of the AI conversation in media focuses on content generation, traffic disruption, and business models, accountability journalism presents a different challenge.
Investigative reporting relies on verification, judgment, sourcing, and public trust. AI can accelerate research and surface patterns that humans might miss, but it cannot replace the reporting instincts, ethical decision-making, and community engagement that make journalism valuable.
As local newsrooms continue to shrink and public trust remains under pressure, the future of accountability reporting may depend on how effectively journalists learn to use AI without sacrificing the standards that define their work.
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What we cover
- Rick Hirsch’s 42-year career at the Miami Herald and his transition to the Collier Prize
- Why accountability journalism remains essential to healthy communities
- What journalists really think about AI according to recent newsroom surveys
- How AI can help reporters analyze documents, legislative records, and public meeting transcripts
- The innovative work behind CalMatters’ Digital Democracy project
- How AI can help uncover story leads and reporting opportunities
- Why shrinking local news coverage creates accountability gaps
- The growing challenge of misinformation and declining trust in journalism
- Whether AI can help combat accusations of media bias
- Where the ethical red lines are for AI in investigative reporting
- The future of subscriptions, memberships, and journalism business models
- Why reporters still play an irreplaceable role in holding governments accountable
Key takeaways
AI is a reporting assistant, not a replacement
For accountability journalism, AI’s greatest value lies in helping reporters process information faster, identify patterns, and uncover potential leads. Human verification and editorial judgment remain essential.
Local journalism may benefit the most
As newsroom resources continue to decline, AI tools can help journalists monitor government meetings, legislative activity, and public records that would otherwise go uncovered.
Trust remains journalism’s biggest challenge
Technology alone cannot solve declining public trust. Transparency, documentation, and showing audiences how reporting is done may become even more important in the AI era.
The business model remains uncertain
The industry continues to grapple with how journalism will be funded as AI increasingly becomes an intermediary between audiences and information.
Accountability reporting still matters
Despite economic pressures and technological disruption, journalists remain motivated by the ability to expose wrongdoing, inform communities, and create meaningful change through their reporting.
About the show:
To explore more conversations like this and see what’s new, visit the Media Copilot website at mediacopilot.ai. You’ll find new episodes, expanded resources, and tools designed for journalists, communicators, and media leaders navigating the fast-changing world of AI. It’s the home base for everything Media Copilot and it’s just getting started.
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Produced by Pete Pachal and Executive Producer Michele Musso.
Edited by the Musso Media Team
Music: “Favorite” by Alexander Nakarada, licensed under CC BY 4.0
All rights reserved. © AnyWho Media 2026
TRANSCRIPT :
Pete Pachal (00:30.414)
Hi, welcome to the Media Copilot. It's a podcast about how AI is changing media, news, and communication. I'm your host, Pete Paschal. I cover tech for a long time as a journalist, and now I talk with the media leaders, builders, and the creators trying to answer the question, how will we get information in the future, and how will that transform journalism and the business of media?
Quick housekeeping note if you're listening on Apple or Spotify, please leave a five-star review and maybe a nice comment And if you're watching on YouTube, please like the video and subscribe to the channel if you don't mind Those things really do help more people find the show My guest today is Rick Hirsch director of the call your prize for state government accountability at the University of Florida
Rick spent decades at the Miami Herald, including as managing editor, and he now works closely with the kind of journalism that's hardest to do and easiest to lose, reporting that holds state and local governments accountable to the people. That's where this AI conversation gets interesting, I think. In a lot of media conversations, AI gets talked about as a writing tool, or it's a traffic killer, or it's a business threat, but in investigative journalism, the question is a little bit more specific.
It's really about can AI help reporters make sense of all the documents and spot patterns and speed up their research and do all that without weakening the verification and the editorial judgment that makes the work trustworthy. So today I'm going to talk to Rick about the state of journalism, but especially investigative journalism and how AI is being used in that kind of work where certain red lines should be perhaps.
More importantly, maybe how the culture of newsrooms is changing as these tools become ever more present. Rick Hirsch, welcome to the Media Co-Pilot.
Rick Hirsch (02:25.2)
Thanks Pete, glad to be here with you.
Pete Pachal (02:27.744)
Awesome. So I gave kind of the short version there. Honestly, I look at your LinkedIn and it's a little bit like career goals if you're a journalist, right? Like you've done so much good work with the Herald and other things, but really give me like the quick rundown of your career and how you've spent it in accountability journalism, which is good term. don't hear it all that.
Rick Hirsch (02:49.532)
Sure, thanks. Well, 42 years at the Miami Herald started out covering government and politics. That's sort of my background and my passion and became an editor. Don't know why somebody thought I should be an editor, at least certainly didn't at the time. And in that role started out overseeing community based reporting in Miami, local governments, large and small.
and at a certain point began managing more people. Always kind of missed the story piece of it, but overseeing investigations at the Herald and we've had a pretty good run over the time that I've been there. And after doing that for 42 years and the last few years of both the first Trump administration and COVID and
In South Florida, the Parkland shooting, the Pulse shooting in Orlando, the collapse of the building in Surfside decided at a certain point that having my laptop open every night was something I had enough of.
Pete Pachal (04:05.998)
you
Rick Hirsch (04:06.556)
I had had a career recruiting reporters and for a period of time did some teaching at Florida International University and as a recruiter for the company that owned the Miami Herald, McClatchy, for all of its 30 newsrooms. And then this opportunity came along to oversee at the time a fairly new journalism prize focused on state government accountability at my alma mater, the University of Florida. And that seemed like a really important and
fun thing to do. And so that's what I've been doing for the last year and a half overseeing the Collier Prize.
Pete Pachal (04:43.084)
Nice. Yeah, tell us more about that. Like, why does it exist? How did it come to be? What drew you to it?
Rick Hirsch (04:48.24)
Well, of all things, there's an apartment developer in Gainesville, Florida, who has a real passion around journalism. His name is Nathan Collier. His great, great, great, great, great uncle. I'm not sure if I have all the greats right. Was the founder of Collier's Magazine in the 1880s. And he considers
investigative journalism and journalism in general, part of his family legacy. And so he funded the prize starting in 2018. It was just an annual prize. And then about two years ago, two plus, he gave the University of Florida an $8 million endowment to permanently endow the prize, hold an annual symposium on investigative reporting, focused on state government related institutions. And that's evolved into now we have a quarter
We do an annual survey of journalists on their attitudes and challenges. And of course, the big prize, the $25,000 prize, which most years is given out at the White House Correspondents Association dinner. This year, the award winners were there, but the prize didn't get given out for reasons that we don't need to get into in this.
Pete Pachal (05:59.607)
you
Pete Pachal (06:03.83)
Right, yeah, there are a lot of other sources on that one. No, we're not here to investigate that, but totally understandable. Yeah, that's great. I love that it's obviously not just an honor, but it has that financial part of it, finances are very challenged in journalism at the best of times. So that sounds really helpful.
So, okay, so I wanted to get a little bit into your career just because obviously it's very interesting, but also like you've clearly seen digital changes again and again in newsrooms and the media at large, know, the shift to just the shift to digital in general, the shift to social, mobile, all these things that have changed, not just how it's distributed, but you know, I'd argue also the practice of journalism on some levels. And now it seems like we're going into potentially the biggest change. I mean, I'll get your thoughts on it, but it's this AI moment must feel somewhat familiar to you, but also a bit different. What is your sort of, you know, zoomed out thousand foot view of AI and what it's doing to journalism?
Rick Hirsch (07:18.224)
Well, and I come at this both as a practitioner and a newsroom manager. And so I understand the concern reporters have. And I should say, I've been a media manager through the internet age, actually oversaw websites for the Miami Herald at a certain point. So.
We've gone through incredible loss in terms of resources in newsrooms. And there's understandable concern about the impact AI could have on that. My kind of perspective is the loss already happened from 2007 to last year.
Huge losses in resources in newsrooms. And there is some concern, rightfully, what AI can do, how it can be used to reduce resources in newsrooms. But I think a lot of journalists are sort of missing the power of AI in expanding their ability to cover things that they no longer can do because of the loss of resources.
So my background, my start was in covering small towns across South Florida. There was a time when the Miami Herald had 45 reporters covering local communities, local communities in Miami, and now they probably have five covering those local communities. But there is this potential with AI to get that view from 30,000 feet of what's going on in some of those communities and make smart choices about where to put the limited resources that newsrooms now have. So I think that's an exciting thing. I think that's a real opportunity. One of the things that we'll probably talk about a little bit, we did a survey of journalists and their concerns about AI and seeing it as both a threat.
Rick Hirsch (09:24.764)
...and a value, I think focusing on the threat for a lot of reporters is missing the point of how they can use this to increase their own value.
Pete Pachal (09:38.434)
Yeah, let's talk a little bit about that and some of the findings. So, you know, like I do feel like this is a rapidly evolving thing. Certainly my experience was that there was a lot of skepticism, certainly at the outset of the AI, I guess the current AI wave and right, probably rightly so, given the quality of the models and sort of that folks hadn't really figured out how to use them in the right way. Fast forward three years.
And now I feel like a good chunk of, a good chunk, not all of it, but a good chunk of it has kind of been worked out to some extent and guardrails are in place. in my limited experience, there's been at least some thawing of that skepticism. And there's a little bit more, whether it's excitement or just giving into the inevitability, I'm not sure. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it and maybe even think about...like first of all, like what the survey showed and also like, you see different textures in different parts of the newsroom?
Rick Hirsch (10:43.344)
Well, so the survey showed a majority of journalists seeing this as some potential threat, which is legit. At the same time, that same cohort, about 18 % of them were actively using AI in any kind of capacity. And so I think there's a lack of understanding of how it can advance the plot for you as a reporter.
how it can more quickly get you to a source you didn't know about, an expert on a topic, or a document that might take hours to find that you could find quickly, or ways to going through agendas or background material to find the thing that you really need. And of course, it requires humans.
to vet that information, make sure what you're getting from AI is accurate. But its ability, I think, to advance the plot has incredible value. in the area that I've been interested in, both state and local government, there are some newsrooms that are, and some resources that are really making incredible strides, I think, to improve how we do this work.
Pete Pachal (12:05.976)
Yeah, what are you thinking about specifically? Obviously, you're like accountability journalism. sort of say investigative, but I guess accountability is sort of more of an umbrella term because investigative always implies like giant feature, like your spotlight from the Boston Globe or something. And I think there's a lot of day to day work that's very important too, obviously. But are you thinking about specifically grounded tools like Notebook LM or even Google Pinpoint that
go through document troves or maybe even just homegrown stuff that does that kind of thing. And these tools that sort of not just do research but also help you process and analyze like just huge data sets.
Rick Hirsch (12:48.538)
Yeah, I would say all of the above. And there are some great examples. I think the best example at the state level is what CalMatters has developed with its digital democracy project. for those who aren't familiar, so the digital democracy tool that CalMatters developed ingests every video, every word spoken in the California legislature.
Pete Pachal (12:50.156)
Mm-hmm.
Rick Hirsch (13:17.852)
They pull in campaign contributions to every state legislator and using AI and analyzing that. It is a tool that both journalists and the public can use to try to find out what's being said and how legislators have voted on you choose the topic. And at the same time, it also creates what I would call a sort of story menu, potential story menu, it finds anomalies in how a legislator may have voted on issue A that is contrary to how they have typically voted on that issue in the past and gives a reporter an opportunity to look into whether there are specific campaign contributions on that. it generates kind of a digital tip sheet that CalMatters makes available to journalism organizations across California, not just their own, to pursue stories if they wish. And these are tips. They're maybe a little better, but maybe no better than the tips you get from the people who call you randomly when you're sitting in a newsroom and suggest you check out X, Y, or Z. They certainly need to be checked out.
But there are some really good leads that this system has created that have turned into good stories, really good stories, not just for CalMatters, but for TV affiliates in California, for other local newsrooms across the state. they just got a pretty hefty grant, I think $9 million from the Trust in America Institute.
I think it's $9 million over five years to try to develop a digital democracy tool to expand that to other states. And I think that has huge power. There used to be dozens and dozens of reporters who covered the state legislature in California. I'm in Florida, same is true. Now a fraction of that are there on a daily basis, but...
Rick Hirsch (15:35.066)
The potential of this giving access to both reporters across states and citizens groups to monitor what their state legislators are doing is really tremendous. So that's a really encouraging sign. There's another organization called Seagov, which just got a night grant. They're very active in the Bay Area that ingests video from local governments. So we're talking about the state level.
Pete Pachal (15:47.373)
Nice.
Pete Pachal (15:53.964)
yeah, I of this one.
Rick Hirsch (16:05.484)
C-gov is really focused more on smaller governments. not, I mean, they would certainly help the Boston Globe or the Minneapolis Star Tribune or the Miami Herald, but their real focus is on some of these nonprofit startups that are more hyperlocal and they're ingesting video from local government meetings and then...
using an internal AI tool. This is not something that they're not pulling in information from everything that chat GPT might be pulling in or whatever the noise that tends to lead to hallucinations when you're work with AI. They're just pulling that in from the actual government meetings and what's spoken and the agendas and et cetera. And creating
Pete Pachal (16:39.286)
Right.
Pete Pachal (16:55.491)
Go.
Rick Hirsch (16:56.976)
ways for journalists to search and find the most important thing that was said at a meeting or.
Pete Pachal (17:02.962)
Yeah, and video and audio also just kind of like a little bit more challenging in terms of those general rag systems, you know, they're gonna, which obviously are processing a lot more and want to just like summarize and or look for summaries. So yeah, it's great. You need you definitely need a targeted tool for those kind of things. And luckily, most local governments do throw a lot of that stuff up on YouTube. And it's just there. You just need the right tool to look at it.
All that sounds really great. like the though I've got to say the report does identify a lot of challenges in accountability journalism today, right? Beyond just resources, you know, going from like, you know, dozens of reporters to just a few. So I think it's sites, things like access problems are more prevalent today. That's interesting. And I'd love to hear about that. But, you know, there's also just the factor of disinformation and I, you know, all those terms, disinformation, misinformation, they get thrown around. But I think whether, whatever you, how to define them, I think it's very clear. There's just a lot more noise out there today. and then there's just the whole thing, like, is the public, do they even care? You know, like there's just, whether that's a symptom of just too much stuff out there, getting their attention, et cetera. so tell me about the challenges, but also.
Can AI, when used as a tool, help counter these particular challenges directly? And maybe I'm probably leaving some out, so you feel free to fill in the blanks.
Rick Hirsch (18:39.386)
Well, I mean, I think it can help. But I think that's where the humans come in. Because everything needs to be fact-checked. It doesn't matter where you get it from. I mean, even some of the tools we were talking about that are analyzing video and...
Pete Pachal (18:46.094)
Mm-hmm.
Rick Hirsch (19:01.23)
and sorting and categorizing it so it's easier to search, you still need to go to the video clip and make sure that the text, for example, that it generated is accurate, right? The artificial intelligence tools can't knock on doors and interview people, and they can't wait outside the mayor's office till he comes out or she when.
he or she doesn't return your phone calls. And so I think it's really important to remember that those things that journalists do still have to happen. mean, the issue of trust is a huge one. So there's all sorts of data that shows how...
people rely less and less on what used to be considered trusted sources for news. And I think anyone who's in the news business is faced with this reality that I think a lot of public officials from the top down will characterize any story that portrays them in a negative life as just being fake. It's become the go-to. It doesn't matter.
Pete Pachal (19:57.038)
Right.
Rick Hirsch (20:19.974)
how well documented it is, they will still at least initially say, that didn't happen. That's fake news. It's our enemies out there. So how that's combated.
Pete Pachal (20:28.75)
Mm.
Rick Hirsch (20:35.782)
to regain the trust that's lost. mean, part of it is show your work always. Being able to quickly, and AI can help do this, go to the video when you're writing a story about what was said in a public meeting. Being able to show the actual clip can really have impact. But it is.
Pete Pachal (21:04.59)
Mm.
Rick Hirsch (21:04.892)
Probably the biggest problem journalists face beyond resources is this lack of trust and lack of focus.
Pete Pachal (21:13.082)
And what do you think about the specific accusation of bias, which is prevalent in, it seems like in the world now. And is, I'm always curious, do you think AI has a role in either fighting that or disproving that, or even just giving maybe whether it's true or not, some sort of layer of perceived objectivity, you know, cause there's like sort of a... putting aside political bias, there's also kind of like an automation bias that people have, like they trust machines sometimes in weird ways. know, people will drive their cars into lakes just because like their navigation told them to.
So I don't know, I think about this sometimes and like, is this as AI becomes more of an intermediary between people and the information they got. Are there, there's obvious issues with that, are there upsides to that? I don't know, how do you just think about the issue of bias and...
know, real or perceived.
Rick Hirsch (22:13.222)
Well, I don't know how AI solves that as it becomes more and more efficient at creating things that are fake but are hard to detect as fake. I think we've all seen in the last year a big change from AI-generated videos where you'd notice the person only had four fingers.
There are fewer tells that something's manufactured than there used to be as it gets better and better. so, boy, how do we combat that? How do we make people trust? I can certainly imagine something crazy happening at a public meeting and having people in the meeting initially just say, well, that didn't happen. That was AI generated. How do you prove that it wasn't?
Pete Pachal (23:11.534)
Hmm.
Rick Hirsch (23:12.284)
I think that's a huge problem. mean, that's a huge problem. And what are the, we talk about what the guardrails are for journalists. And of course there's a lot of conversation over what the guardrails are for AI companies. And beyond that, if the company is developing AI can even control the machines they're creating.
Pete Pachal (23:35.183)
And what do you think about AI's role in other parts of the newsroom process? you know, is like, where are the red lines here? You know, is drafting ever acceptable? Does it depend on exactly what you're doing? Certainly, we as we've, it's kind of a given, obviously, everything needs human review, which you've already said, but
Are there things beyond just saying that? there just things that AI should never be a part of? Obviously, again, we've talked about the capabilities it simply can't do. Obviously, it can't win trust of a source or a reader. It can't pursue real journalism. think all that's a given. But then what else should it not do?
Rick Hirsch (24:21.87)
Well, I think when you're getting into investigative reporting, it can't write the story for you. It really can't. Can AI help you copy edit? Well, maybe, yeah. mean, it can certainly find spelling errors maybe better than a set of tired eyes.
in the 87th graph of 150 inch story. But the judgment it requires to put together an investigative story, think, I don't think AI should be doing that. I don't think reporters should be using that. I do think that there is value in using AI.
I mean, there are a of stories that I wrote as a young reporter that where I would rather have been doing something higher end. mean, AI can take the box score of a baseball game and write five paragraphs from it. And I think most sports writers would rather be doing a profile of player X than writing a bunch of those five inch stories. And I think you can take a real estate transaction and turn it into some text.
And most real estate reporters have their eyes on a bigger prize than writing that. So the degree to which it can free up reporters from the mundane to do the more important, I think is really valuable. But doing that more important really requires a reporter's judgment and an editor's review. in the case of an important...investigative story, a legal review.
Pete Pachal (26:21.208)
Totally. And if AI is also present in the ecosystem and you have these things where you spend a ton of time on an investigation and it's out there, and then some AI portal just kind of summarizes it. it's like, is that, because this is the thing that I feel like obviously is a big center of tension between the media and AI companies. I'm more curious about the reporter, editor, investigative level.
You want your stuff to be out there and you want people to access it. But at the same time, you want to make sure that you have, you know, both proper credit and the means to keep doing these kinds of things. So how do you, well, not just how do you feel about, like, is the right sort of balance here in terms of like using a, thinking of AI as a distribution platform for this kind of work.
Rick Hirsch (27:26.586)
It's really tricky. It's really tricky. So if high quality, vetted, investigative work is not available for the large language models to access, and there are lawsuits and negotiations and all sorts of things ongoing between news organizations and AI companies about how that ultimately should work, right?
But if that information is not available, but what is, is disinformation and members of the public are turning to AI to do their homework and that's not available to them, then what are they getting? I mean, that's one side of the argument. On the other side, news organizations, reporters need to be paid a living wage to do that quality work. And so if...
No one is reading their stories on their platforms or subscribing because they can get it all for free through an AI subscription or through search, then where are they? I'm going to just, not to cop out, but above my pay grade to figure that one out. mean, it's pre-AI.
When the entire issue was search, I spent a lot of time learning, coaching, training journalists to be really smart about using SEO. So audiences that really had no loyalty to a certain publication.
Pete Pachal (29:05.758)
Mm. Me too.
Rick Hirsch (29:15.628)
we're likely to find the news, the story by that publication and read it. And that's how, you know, the pennies went into the pocket of that news organization. And of course, AI is changing that. So I wish I, if I had that answer, I would be doing something else right now.
Pete Pachal (29:24.75)
Hmm.
Pete Pachal (29:32.75)
Hmm.
Pete Pachal (29:36.845)
Yeah.
Yeah. And so it's, it's one of these tricky things, which is interesting. I'm glad you brought up search and SEO because I always look at incentives, right? So it's like the search and social era had certain incentive. let's do keywords. Let's get on page one of Google. And it taking to an extreme that turned into these sort of like in the social case, these bite-sized provocative stories and culture reporting. And then in the search case, it's like, let's litter it with keywords. In fact, let's write articles just to do keywords like that.
So those incentives could be easily perverted and they were in a lot of places. AI has different incentives. I don't know if they're better. I'm sure they're different, but they are different. journalists are always kind of aware of these incentives on some level. Like you say, you go, I had to coach people on how search worked. And I've done that a lot myself because you got to be in the game. Like that's the thing I would tell people, right? It'd be like, look, it's not that...
you're writing for machines, but the machine is the intermediary now. And if you're not doing, taking care to be present in search, you're just not reaching anyone. And I feel like that's going to be the case with AI sooner than later, right? And so, you know, putting even aside the compensation question, we can talk a little bit about that, because actually I'm interested in if you're thinking like, if that isn't dealt with.
Well, actually, let's attack that head on. if that isn't dealt with, which is to say that you're not getting paid by the AI companies for this, because we're not sure where that's going to land. But to some extent, it's happening for a lot of publications. It doesn't seem like it's going to be an option. Does that necessitate moving toward a model that's more like memberships, events, like these other ways of monetizing content that aren't just like putting ads next to it the traffic just won't be there?
Pete Pachal (31:36.234)
If that is the case, could it be spun as better or adapted into something better? mean, you think about if you have this maybe smaller audience, but they're all members, there's more of a stronger engagement there. I don't know, where do you land on this?
Rick Hirsch (31:55.526)
Well, I don't want to be gloom and doom-y about it, but maybe this will be a little bit. So I think the subscription model is really important. And loyalty to a publication is really important. However, the challenge in that is the expectation of your subscribers. And we are in an era where many people want to read information that reinforces what they already think. And so if most of your subscribers lean right or lean left, you get blowback when you're publishing stories that are contrary to where they lean.
And the more dependent you are on that subscriber base, the more of a potential problem that becomes. So that's always concerned me about the subscription model. What I always liked about the subscription model is it's not geared toward clickbait. It's not geared towards, in Miami, the alligator that falls into a boat and everybody scrambles. Not that I'm against the story about the alligator in the boat, but that's not accountability journalism, right? That's just, you know, viral stuff. Right. So so the deep dive, I mean, the stories we know are most likely to cause people to subscribe are investigative stories, enterprise stories, stories you can't read somewhere else. And so, you know, I do think that's both a journalist, a journalistic good
Pete Pachal (33:26.944)
Exactly, you're getting addicted to those traffic spikes at that point. Yeah.
Rick Hirsch (33:52.764)
and a business strategy good, but I worry a little bit about how you might be painting yourself into a corner with a specific audience.
Pete Pachal (34:07.928)
So as we sort of wrap things up here, I'd love to try to unpack a little bit about some of the stuff on the positive side, getting away from the doomerism. Like the report did say that journalists remain committed to accountability despite all the pressures they're under, despite being research, you know, the resource strapping, the sort of difficulties that we've just talked about. What do you think is keeping that commitment alive?
Rick Hirsch (34:34.556)
Well, I think we still see how the reporting can make a difference. And one of the things that we do in the monthly newsletter that we published with Call Your Prize, we have a section every month where we list like a dozen to 15 stories across the country, accountability stories that have made a difference. And they really move the needle. They change laws. And that's why...
I think most of us got into this business. I'm fortunate enough, I spent my whole career at the Miami Herald and I grew up in Miami and being able to have an impact on the community I live in. I mean, some people do that through in civic life, they run for office or they work in local government or they work for a nonprofit. I was able to do that in journalism and I think that's what motivates most people.
who do this work. It's certainly not, I mean, we're never gonna get rich doing it. When I was in journalism school, my grandmother said, why don't you get into a profession? Anyway, so I think that's always been a motivator. It's still a motivator. It still matters. I think we have the ability to highlight wrongs and give people the information to try to write them. And that's the driving force behind.
Pete Pachal (35:33.196)
Thank
Rick Hirsch (35:56.508)
most journalists, how we can convince people that that's what drives us is part of our challenge going forward. But that's a big deal. And then
I'm encouraged by some of the tools that are being developed to use AI so that we can better do that, not just at the level where the New York Times is operating, but where some hyperlocal sites are trying to cover communities and figure out why they're going to build a 10-story building where that gas station used to be in the corner.
Pete Pachal (36:32.834)
Nice. You're kind of, think, partially answering my last question, which is going to be, it's always the same. It's looking out into the future, projecting out and thinking about the AI mediation of our media ecosystem and the practice of journalism. What is one thing that you're really concerned about and another thing that you're hopeful about?
Rick Hirsch (36:58.62)
So I'll the concerned part first. I'm concerned continually about the business model. And I think this is one more challenge. think journalism organizations have always been
three, four, or five steps behind technology in figuring out how to adapt what we do to the changes that are taking place. And the speed with which AI is evolving, think, is making the ground that's being lost is being lost faster. But I am optimistic about the tools it can provide.
to cover areas that have been lost over the last 20 years in terms of local government. And I'm hopeful that good, smart journalists will, while they need to protect their personal interests, will invest the time and effort to figure out how to make AI work for them in the work they need to do in covering communities.
Pete Pachal (38:09.89)
Nice. We'll leave it there. Hirsch, thanks for coming by the Media Copilot and sharing your thoughts. Cheers.
Rick Hirsch (38:15.324)
Pete enjoyed it.