By The Copilot & Michele Musso

For many journalists and publishers, artificial intelligence feels like the next existential threat…a technology capable of flooding the internet with cheap content, eroding trust, disrupting search, and making it even harder for real journalism to survive.

But what if AI could also be part of the solution?

On this episode of The Media Copilot, host Pete Pachal sits down with Paul Gewuerz, host of Small Press, Big Ideas and founder of LocalPod, to explore what is actually happening on the front lines of local media.

After more than 120 conversations with publishers, editors, entrepreneurs, and local news operators, Paul has seen firsthand how deeply challenged the industry remains. But he has also discovered something that rarely makes the headlines: new ideas are taking root.

From local newspapers transforming themselves into cafés and community gathering spaces to publishers building new revenue streams, launching podcasts, embracing events, and using AI to accomplish work that once required entire teams, local journalism is being reinvented in unexpected ways.

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Pete and Paul discuss why trust may become even more valuable in an internet overwhelmed by AI-generated content, how small newsrooms are already using tools like ChatGPT and Otter.ai, and why AI could give independent publishers the ability to launch products and businesses that simply weren’t possible before.

They also confront the darker side of this transformation, including AI slop, fake local news sites, politically funded “pink slime” operations, and the growing challenge of knowing what information…and which sources…can actually be trusted.

In this episode:

• Why local journalism remains vital to healthy communities and democracy
• How innovative publishers are reinventing the local news business model
• Why trust could become journalism’s greatest advantage in the age of AI
• How small newsrooms are actually using AI today
• The opportunities AI creates for new products, revenue streams, and branded content
• Why AI-generated local news and “pink slime” sites pose a growing threat
• How podcasts can help local publishers grow audiences and deepen community relationships
• Why Paul believes AI represents a new industrial revolution
• The uncomfortable reality of building with AI: if you can create something faster, so can everyone else

Why this matters

For Paul, the promise of AI is personal. After spending more than two years building a software platform with limited progress, he used AI-assisted coding tools to complete it in just two months.

“I’ve been working on a software platform for my company for two and a half years, had about 10% done. I have finished it in the last two months. It is operational. People are on the platform.”

His experience raises one of the biggest questions facing media today:

What happens when suddenly anyone can build almost anything?

About the 👤 Guest

Paul Gewuerz on LinkedIn: Paul Gewuerz

LocalPod website: LocalPod.co

Small Press, Big Ideas on LinkedIn: Small Press, Big Ideas

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.

Enjoyed this episode?

Subscribe to The Media Copilot on Substack, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite app. On YouTube? Tap the Like button and Subscribe to the YouTube channel. For more AI tools and resources built for media professionals, visit mediacopilot.ai.

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

Episode Transcript

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and readability.

Introduction

Pete Pachal (00:34)

Hi, welcome to The Media Copilot. It’s a podcast about how AI is changing media, news, and communication. I’m your host, Pete Pachal. I covered tech for a long time as a journalist, and now I have deep conversations with the media people, the builders, and the creators who are all answering the question: How will we get information in the future? And how will that transform journalism and the business of media?

My guest today is Paul Gewuerz, host of Small Press, Big Ideas. That’s a podcast about local news in the United States and the people trying to make it work. Paul talks to publishers, editors, entrepreneurs, and local news operators about what’s working, what isn’t, and the future of community journalism.

I was recently a guest on Paul’s show, and we had a lively conversation about AI and local news and search and trust and all the things. So I wanted to flip the microphone this time and get his view from the front lines of local media.

Local news really is where a lot of the AI debate gets very real. These organizations are usually understaffed and underfunded, but they’re deeply tied to their communities. AI could potentially help them cover more ground, build more products, reach new audiences, and save time. But it could also flood the zone with cheap content and make trust even harder.

So we’re going to talk about what Paul’s hearing from small publishers and how local newsrooms are actually using AI. Where’s the risk? Where’s the opportunity? And what does community journalism look like if AI becomes part of the basic infrastructure of media?

Before we get into it, please take a second to rate or review the show. It really would help a lot. If you’re listening on Apple or Spotify, that might mean leaving 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. Those things really do help people find the show.

All right. Housekeeping over. Paul, welcome to The Media Copilot.

Paul Gewuerz (02:46)

Pete, thanks, man. Thanks for having me on. Good to talk to you again. It’s been a few months, or a few lifetimes in the AI world and media world. So yeah, good to be here.

Pete Pachal (02:49)

Yeah, likewise, man. Totally. I think it’s like 500 Claude versions ago.

Before we get into AI and all the stuff around community journalism and local news that I just talked about, let’s talk a little bit about you. I’d love to hear more about your history, your background, and what brought you to covering local media in this way.

From Audiobooks to Local Journalism

Paul Gewuerz (03:20)

Yeah, I’d love to. I’ve said it a million times on my podcast: I’m not a journalist. I don’t come from a journalism background. I’ve always had an interest in it. In high school, I was really attracted to more gonzo journalism. I was a big fan of Hunter S. Thompson.

I went to school for journalism for a few years and graduated in 2008, so not a great time for the job market. I went into an entirely different field. I actually worked for a beer distributor for about a decade.

Pete Pachal (03:58)

Okay. I feel like that would have been great in 2008, with everyone wanting to drink their sorrows away.

Paul Gewuerz (04:18)

It was great. The beer industry does good in a good economy and better in a bad one. That’s kind of the internal line, anyway.

I worked there at a big corporation, a household name, for a long time and eventually got frustrated with the large corporate structures.

I’ve been told that I have a good voice, so I actually got into narrating audiobooks. I did that freelance for a few years, left my corporate gig, and eventually got out of that freelance, feast-or-famine mindset.

I’m a big audio guy, so I started producing podcasts for clients, social media influencers, content creators, etc.

A few years back, I was approached by a local news outlet in the Seattle area to produce a podcast for them, and it reignited that interest in journalism, specifically local journalism. We put together a podcast for them, and I got really interested in it. I wanted to work more in the space, started reaching out to more publishers, launched my own podcast, Small Press, Big Ideas, and I’ve just tumbled down a rabbit hole of media and specifically local journalism.

I’ve had a crash course in it over the last few years. I went into it initially as a business interest. I thought, “This is an interesting niche to target.” Then, after talking to people, I realized how vital it is to democracy and a community.

There are studies showing that when a local news source disappears in an area, creating what’s referred to as a news desert, corruption and financial misdealings at the city and county level skyrocket because there’s no accountability.

So besides the need for good-quality local news and information, it’s a vital thing for our society. I didn’t expect to tumble down that rabbit hole, but that’s where I’m at.

Today, I host the Small Press, Big Ideas podcast, and I have a company called LocalPod.co, where we specialize in producing podcasts for mostly all-digital publishers. But specifically, my heart is with local media operators and helping them grow audience and revenue from there.

That’s pretty much the story in a nutshell, I’d say.

The Untold Stories of Local Media

Pete Pachal (06:15)

I feel like with local media, there are obviously networks and groups that cover certain regions and that sort of thing. But generally, I don’t know if there’s a lot of communication outside of those things.

I feel like your podcast really provides a good service by creating conversation around that layer of media.

Everyone talks about local media almost at arm’s length, in the third person. “Wouldn’t it be nice if we had more?” But I feel like the actual newspapers are rarely part of that discussion. It’s usually just people opining on them, or whatever they are, not necessarily newspapers.

I think you’re providing a valuable service by giving folks an outlet. Also, people love to talk about their communities and themselves, and as you’ve found, I’m sure there are tons of unique stories out there in terms of success in journalism.

Paul Gewuerz (07:20)

Yeah, it’s a bigger topic than I realized. When I started the podcast, I thought maybe I could get 10 people I’d researched to come on. I’m 120 episodes deep now and still have people lined up. There are a lot of interesting stories out there.

I had Steven Waldman on the podcast early on from Rebuild Local News, an advocacy group out of Washington focused on strengthening local news. I think he’s the one who put it best in terms of local media sustainability.

He said it’s like there’s a forest fire. The last 20 years of Google and Meta and everything else have decimated the local media industry. But there are all these little green shoots and sprouts coming up. You wouldn’t know it from looking at the side of a mountain, but if you look closely, they’re there.

That’s what the podcast has shown me. There are a lot of cool stories and innovations happening. It’s just not necessarily at the scale we need yet.

Pete Pachal (08:16)

I’d love to hear about some of those. Are you thinking about anything specific when you think about the promising things being seeded right now?

Paul Gewuerz (08:22)

I’ve had a lot of people on the show, and every organization is different. Every community is different, and this is a huge country. The podcast is mostly based in the U.S., although we’ve had a couple of people from the U.K. and Canada.

I’ve had nonprofits on. I had somebody from South Carolina who left the legacy newspaper in town and started basically a glorified Substack. Three or four years later, they’re a nonprofit that works mostly on sponsorships, and I think they have a newsroom of four or five, maybe five or six, full-time people now. It’s become this vital thing to the community.

For a Canadian example, The Green Line up in Toronto is really interesting. It was founded by Anita Li, who was also on the podcast. I really like the design. They’ve built The Green Line to be very social media-native. Everything is visually appealing. Even the functionality of the website is different from what you think of when you imagine a newspaper site.

They create in-depth guides on things like housing and the job market, and they’re very practical. It’s not just an article you’d read. It’s a different format, and they’re crushing it.

Those two come to mind, but I could go on and on. There are a lot of examples.

The Hard Reality of Running Local News

Pete Pachal (10:04)

I’m glad you brought up Anita Li’s operation. I actually used to work with her at Mashable. She’s great.

We’ve talked about some specific examples, but let’s zoom out a bit. What’s your broader perspective on local media now that you’ve talked to more than 120 people and heard so many stories? What do you understand about local news now that you didn’t when you started the show?

Paul Gewuerz (10:36)

You hit the nail on the head when you said everybody holds it at arm’s length and says, “Yeah, we need more good local journalism.” And almost everybody who says that also says, “Well, I’m not going to pay for it.”

That’s a reality.

I think it was a mistake made by the news media industry early on in the internet era to put everything up for free. People got used to that, and it’s very hard to walk it back.

Pete Pachal (10:57)

And we’re reaping the winds of that with AI now that you think about it. But anyway, go on.

Paul Gewuerz (11:05)

Not that anybody knew that at the time. I don’t want to discredit anybody.

But what I’ve seen is that it’s a hard business to operate, especially where it’s needed most in rural America. I’m in western Colorado, in a town of 20,000, which is the biggest city anywhere around my region. I think a lot of folks on the coasts forget just how huge the country is.

It’s a very difficult business to operate on a smaller scale where it’s needed. If we’re using jiu-jitsu belt levels, it’s closer to the black belt level of business operations compared with something that has higher margins.

Combine that with the fact that many of the people who get into smaller outlets are mission-driven journalists. They want to serve the community. They’re not necessarily businesspeople.

You came up in media. There used to be a firewall between the business side and the editorial side. A lot of that needs to be dissolved, and people on either side need to think more like the other side.

Business operators sometimes come in and don’t know how to do good journalism. On the other hand, there are people whose organizations have fallen apart around them, and maybe they’re the last person left, a one-man or one-woman operation running the whole thing. They have to report on everything and get revenue coming in the door.

It’s a challenge. It’s a very, very complicated challenge. I think about it a lot every day, and I don’t have any great answers. But there are also amazing people doing amazing things out there.

Why Local Media Must Reinvent Itself

Pete Pachal (12:50)

For sure. The smaller the organization, the more everyone has to be mindful of how the business is doing and how you’re actually succeeding.

Neither of us means to disparage the spirit of the church-state separation, which has good roots in preventing business interests from affecting journalism. We both believe in that.

But at the same time, there has to be a strategy for running the business. If you’re News Corp, you might have strategists and executives making broader strategic decisions. But if you’re a team of three, four, or five people, everything is strategic to some extent.

I’m not at all endorsing commercial interests affecting the actual journalism, but when it comes to the broader directions you take, everyone is going to have a voice. Especially today, almost every decision seems a bit existential.

Paul Gewuerz (14:25)

Yes, very much.

The way I think about it sometimes is that the local news industry has gone the way of the music industry.

The big record companies in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s were absolutely printing money with records, cassettes, and CDs. Then the internet came along and democratized everything. Napster and LimeWire arrived, disrupted the business model, and now it’s a very different, much smaller business that’s much more spread out.

I think the same thing has happened with news.

Newspapers had this amazing business model throughout the 1900s. They had classified ads and were the primary source of advertising revenue. Then the internet came along, along with Google and Craigslist, and upended that.

It’s never going back to the way it was. Things evolve. They’re constantly in flux. It’s going to change, and it’s a matter of learning how to deal with that and adapt to the new realities and the new environment.

Pete Pachal (15:58)

The music analogy is interesting because the music industry was forced to figure out that selling songs for 99 cents, at least in the 2000s, was kind of the future. Then they had to adapt to this new business model, and it’s interesting that it was forced upon them by tech.

There are a lot of parallels here. I wonder about the media and strategic planning back then. Classified revenue was substantial, and then it went to zero. If they had planned around that, could it have made a difference?

Because in today’s media, specifically with AI, there’s a lot of strategic planning around Google Zero. It hasn’t happened yet. Obviously, Google isn’t dead as a search engine, and the 10 blue links still exist, at least for a while. But people have been planning around Google Zero for a while.

If people had started planning around classified zero in 2000, would there have been quite the apocalypse there was? I don’t know.

At this point in 2026, media has learned so many hard lessons over the last couple of decades that we’ve got this ingrained survival instinct now.

Are you seeing evidence of that at the local level? How are they surviving?

Trust, Community, and New Business Models

Paul Gewuerz (17:30)

To be honest, there are a lot of organizations that, in my opinion, have not changed enough. They’re still relying on advertising and sponsors, scraping by, and doing what they’ve always done.

But the ones that are thriving are doing something unique. They’re building a local brand.

You came on my podcast and talked about how you think it’s going to be a huge boon for PR firms over the next couple of years. Anybody who can generate trust and reliability in an age when anyone can produce anything with AI has an opportunity.

If you can build a brand, get people excited, and generate that trust in a community, those are the organizations doing a really good job.

I thought of a few more examples. There’s the Big Bend Sentinel in Marfa, Texas.

Max Kabat, who came on the podcast, and his wife moved to Marfa. There was an elderly couple running the Big Bend Sentinel, the local newspaper and print shop, and they wanted to retire. Max and his wife purchased it from them.

There was a huge print shop in downtown Marfa, but they didn’t need that much space anymore because most everything is digital now, even though they still have a print product.

They basically cut the space in half. They turned half of this old, really cool print shop into a café, community space, event center, and arts center, with the profits feeding into the journalism.

It’s become an absolute hub. Marfa is a town of about 2,000 people, and I think the combined café, event space, and newspaper employ around eight or 10 full-time people now.

There’s a similar example up in Maine. They have a café and were featured on CBS Sunday Morning. There’s also a bed-and-breakfast tied to it, and upstairs is basically the newspaper.

It all feeds into this idea of a community center. People who want to air their grievances about the city council can come down, have pancakes, and talk to journalists.

There are cool things like that happening.

Pete Pachal (20:18)

Is that an opportunity for sponsorships and things like that? Having an event space…events are the future for media broadly. Obviously, it’s one of many business models, but it’s a growing one.

It sounds like this could be a doorway to that at the local level. You could have a sponsored night and do something related to your publication.

Paul Gewuerz (20:45)

Yeah. My friend Paul Myers is in California’s Central Valley, and they do what I think are called “Brews and News” nights every month or quarter.

They basically rent out the local microbrewery, and you get one free pint of beer. The price is your email address for their newsletter list.

It’s not necessarily a sponsored thing, but it’s about subscribers and growing the audience. I think it’s a cool idea.

How Local Newsrooms Are Actually Using AI

Pete Pachal (21:18)

That’s really cool.

So, Paul, we’re about 20 minutes in and we haven’t talked about AI yet. I feel like I’m getting someone in my ear insisting that I get to the machines.

You talked about some success stories. How much AI is actually being used at the local level, and what are some of the most interesting use cases you’ve come across?

Paul Gewuerz (21:57)

There are a couple of things that almost everyone who comes on the podcast mentions.

The specific tool that seemingly every journalist and entrepreneur running a local news operation mentions is Otter.ai, which is a transcription service. It seems simple and obvious, but everyone swears by Otter for transcribing meeting notes, interviews, city council meetings, etc.

Another trend I’ve seen is normal old ChatGPT being used for ideas. Almost nobody, I should say, is using it to actually write content, at least not unchecked. But using it to generate headline or title ideas seems to be very popular.

I’m an optimist. I’m a fan of AI. I think it can be used as a tool.

A lot of local news publishers are scarred from the rise of Google, the internet, Craigslist, and everything else we’ve talked about. These big tech companies came in and basically hollowed them out over the last 20 years.

I think a lot of them view AI as an extension of that: “This is going to be the final blow. This is it. This is going to do us in.”

I fundamentally disagree with that.

As opposed to The Empire Strikes Back, I think AI tools are Return of the Jedi. I think they’re going to enable so much more time for these organizations.

There are boring back-end business use cases and tasks nobody wants to do but that need to get done. AI can reduce newsroom time spent on those things and enable more good reporting to get done.

I also think there are business models that local media operators have tried in the past that are going to become more possible now. For instance, the idea of operating as a local news outlet and also as a marketing firm for local businesses.

Some people have had success doing marketing for local companies. But that’s almost like adding a whole other business to your newsroom.

Pete Pachal (24:37)

Can you double-click on the marketing part of that? Are you talking about a publication with a team that might also do branded work?

Paul Gewuerz (24:46)

Yes. It’s something that’s been floated around in the space for probably the last 10 years, with some success. But once again, it’s a hard business to run, and that adds another layer of complexity on top of everything else.

Pete Pachal (25:02)

That speaks to what I was saying earlier about the church-state separation. At a major publication, obviously you’re going to have different teams and completely different operations.

At the local level, you’re going to have to put on different hats and figure it out. That’s just the reality.

Paul Gewuerz (25:17)

Yeah. For example, I’m mostly a one-man show for my business, and I need to get a new landing page up for a segment of LocalPod.co.

A year or two ago, that would have taken three days or, if I’m being honest, a week of my time to get polished. I can do that in half a day now with some of these AI tools.

It’s hard to overstate how much more efficient AI has made me at operating my business. I think that’s going to translate to local media operators.

For the marketing example, I think they’ll be able to do their reporting and still have enough time to take on clients, like the real estate brokerage in town that wants branded work done, while also getting a spot in the newspaper that week.

I think it’s going to create more options. We don’t know exactly what it’s going to enable, but I’m seeing it in my own business and my own tinkering with these tools.

There are all kinds of things possible now that I simply didn’t have the time or bandwidth to take on before.

What Can We Do Now That We Couldn’t Do Before?

Pete Pachal (26:26)

I like that. It’s making good on the promise that AI isn’t just about efficiencies. It’s not just making you a little faster, or even a lot faster, and hopefully getting time back.

It’s also about asking: What can we do now that we simply couldn’t do before?

Branded content isn’t reinventing the wheel, but for these publications where, as I said, everything is existential, that’s a big move. Now they don’t necessarily need to hire a completely different team and buy a whole different set of software to do it.

That feels like progress to me.

What also resonated with me is that a lot of the distrust of AI stems from its effect on distribution. AI is obviously vastly affecting distribution and digital discovery. That’s indisputable. But its use as a tool is also indisputable.

You can acknowledge how good it is at making certain things better in your workflows while also acknowledging that, yes, it’s doing something strange to audiences as people get AI summaries and stop there.

Broadly, it’s a “don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater” argument. But I feel like that’s where journalists often end up for some reason.

Are you seeing that change as AI becomes more embedded? On my end, over the last five or six months, I’m seeing more of a resignation among skeptics that this is happening.

Paul Gewuerz (28:23)

I’ve felt the exact same way.

A year ago, if I’d seen some AI headline in the local news industry about somebody using it for something, there would have been a ton of backlash, shaming, and people piling on.

But over the last five or six months, I’ve seen a marked shift in the mood of the industry.

Whether people are resigning themselves to it or just getting more familiar with AI, realizing what it can and can’t do, and becoming more aware of it, the mood has changed.

The vibe has shifted, Pete, from what I can tell.

Could AI Actually Strengthen Local News?

Pete Pachal (29:01)

Yeah. Not completely to, “Hey, it’s awesome,” but more to, “Okay, this is getting embedded.”

Let’s talk about AI disintermediation and distribution. Do you have a sense of the unique factors affecting local media?

Intuitively, I would think local media might be a little less affected because you’re more invested in your own community and what’s happening there. You’d want to go directly to the source.

What are you hearing about how badly Google Zero or the traffic apocalypse is affecting local media?

Paul Gewuerz (29:50)

I think in terms of trust, it’s actually a really good thing for local news.

People are inundated with content coming at them now. If there is a trusted local voice, I think people are going to turn to that more and more. There’s that human connection, a human byline they can actually read.

That being said, local media operators still need to pull that off. It goes back to what I was talking about before: brand building and trust building.

Not everybody has that down.

A lot of people I talk to honestly think they can keep doing what they’ve always done. “We’ve got our website up. We’ve had our masthead for 50 years. People trust that.”

It’s just not the case anymore.

You still need to be on social. You need to be everywhere at the same time.

It’s a dance between the people who don’t want to change and the people who are changing. The people who get it and recognize the opportunity realize that I think it’s going to be a good thing.

Because the AI slop out there is ridiculous.

AI Slop, Fake Local News, and “Pink Slime”

Pete Pachal (31:08)

Let’s talk about slop specifically for local media.

Every few months, it feels like there’s some kind of story about someone trying to game the system with local news.

There was a guy who was eventually hired by 6AM City. That wasn’t necessarily malicious. I think there was a mix of people trying things out who aren’t really journalists and are just throwing locally oriented content out there.

Then there’s this more recent thing in Florida involving a sort of fake site, which sounds a little shadier, and they were apparently running a whole bunch of other sites.

I feel like this keeps happening in local media. Maybe it’s because people think they can do something with local sites and stay under the radar, as opposed to trying to create some fake national site that probably wouldn’t get very far.

Is that basically what’s happening, or is there some unique perfect storm of circumstances fueling this?

Paul Gewuerz (32:31)

I think that’s definitely a thing. You see those headlines pop up.

I think it’s two different things.

One is more malicious, like the story in Florida. It’s referred to as “pink slime.”

Pink slime sites are basically websites that look like legitimate news operations but are funded by some kind of organization with a specific goal, usually political operatives or something like that.

They’re playing themselves off as reliable local journalism and then slandering one political party or the other party’s candidates.

So that’s happening, often with strange funding that nobody can really trace.

At the same time, there’s been a huge trend I’ve seen on YouTube and some podcasts of people getting really interested in local newsletters specifically.

There have been some huge success stories where people say, “I run this local newsletter, and now I make $400,000 a year.”

That has happened, and there’s been a lot of interest and content popping up around it.

With the rise of AI tools making things easier, there are also a lot of people in their basements throwing spaghetti at the wall. Someone can spin up 15 local newsletters with almost nothing, ripping off actual local news outlets, copying their work, and putting it out there.

I think those are the two main culprits.

But there are also legitimate people creating local curated events newsletters. It’s not as simple as good and bad. There are quality people doing this work.

My friend TJ Larkin is in that space, and he puts out a really quality product and teaches other people how to do it.

Podcasting as a Growth Strategy for Local News

Pete Pachal (34:29)

Absolutely. Let’s switch gears as we wrap up here because we’re both podcasters, and you’ve obviously talked and written about podcasting and its relevance to local media.

Where does podcasting factor into a local news strategy? Obviously, people like podcasts, but they’re harder to scale. Is that less true now?

What’s a good podcast growth strategy for local news in 2026?

Paul Gewuerz (35:02)

That’s one of the reasons I zoned in on this a few years ago.

Podcasts are notoriously hard to reliably grow. And when they do grow, it’s almost hard to figure out why unless there’s some kind of viral moment.

If you start a podcast about World War II in the Pacific Theater, for example, it’s hard to find audiences. It’s hard to find first-party data.

The difference I’ve seen with local podcasts in particular, although this does take a little bit of a budget, is a site I use called AudioGO.

It’s an advertising platform that allows you to create 15- and 30-second audio ads and place them on top podcast networks, Pandora, and a few other platforms.

The key is that you can geotarget them by ZIP code.

I’ve seen some success with this, and it’s particularly useful for local podcasts.

If you can communicate your message well in a 30-second spot, something like, “Hey, this is the Montrose Daily Press podcast covering the news and events in your town,” you can geotarget that to people listening to The Daily or top true crime podcasts in your local area.

I haven’t seen anything else work as well as that kind of strategy for general podcasting.

Your podcast and my podcast don’t work like that. You’re covering AI, I’m covering local media, but we’re both speaking to the whole country. It’s harder to target those people.

That’s the edge I’ve seen. Any local operators listening should feel free to use that. That’s kind of the secret sauce we’ve been using.

What Keeps Paul Up at Night About AI?

Pete Pachal (37:00)

I’m sure everyone’s got their notebooks out right now.

I try to end these conversations with a similar question because we see divergent futures ahead of us with AI involved. There’s going to be bad, and there’s going to be good.

What is something that might keep you up at night with regard to AI and media? And what’s something you’re hopeful about?

Paul Gewuerz (37:29)

Something that keeps me up at night is the relentless pace of change.

It’s really hard for me to see what anything is going to look like in two or three years, let alone six months from now.

I’ve been over the moon with some of the capabilities I have now, like with Claude Code. I’ve been working on a software platform for my company for two and a half years and had about 10% done.

I finished it in the last two months.

It’s operational. People are on the platform.

Pete Pachal (38:00)

Nice. What’s the platform? Tell me about it.

Paul Gewuerz (38:03)

It’s my LocalPod Studio. It’s basically a dashboard studio where you can turn written content into an AI-narrated podcast that’s fully distributed in a couple of clicks.

Anybody who wants to check that out can go to LocalPod.co or message me.

But the thing that keeps me up at night is that I built this…

Pete Pachal (38:18)

Nice. Beautiful.

Paul Gewuerz (38:28)

It’s pretty incredible.

I have a little bit of coding ability, but not much. Minor league. And I’ve been able to build this crazy thing, and I have all these other ideas I can build.

But at the same time, I’m thinking: That means anybody can build this.

I think it’s a great equalizer and a great democratizing force. I’m excited and optimistic that I can build things and do things for my business.

The competition is going to come with that. I think it’s still early.

Combine all that with the fact that I don’t know what the whole economy is going to look like in a couple of years because you can’t map what that growth is going to look like.

I’m sorry, what was the second part of the question?

Pete Pachal (39:08)

You kind of almost mixed it in there, but it was also: What are you hopeful about?

Paul Gewuerz (39:25)

It’s really kind of the same thing.

There are doomers. There’s a lot of doomerism around AI. I don’t think AI is sentient. I don’t think it’s going to get there.

When you actually dig in and see how it works, it’s a very powerful tool. I don’t think it’s going to murder all of us. I just don’t see it in the cards. Or there’s a very small chance, at least.

Pete Pachal (39:36)

Yeah, people can tell it to do bad things, but it doesn’t have any ideas of its own.

Paul Gewuerz (39:39)

Yes. There’s no ghost in the machine, is my take on it.

I think this is a new industrial revolution. I don’t think that’s underselling it at all.

People are worried about all the jobs disappearing. But every time people have said that in recorded history, if you go back and read about it, new things emerge that people couldn’t even imagine becoming jobs.

I graduated high school in 2003. I’m 41 years old.

My job titles today include podcast producer and SaaS platform owner. My wife and I also operate an Airbnb upstairs.

None of that existed when I graduated high school in 2003.

If I’d said I was an Airbnb host and podcast producer, I would have been locked up, basically. And that was only a little over two decades ago.

Things change.

I think there’s a future of abundance, and I think AI is going to help us unlock that. There are some issues with it, but I think they’re going to get sorted out because it’s worth it to sort them out.

Pete Pachal (40:50)

That’s awesome. We’ll leave it there.

Paul, thank you so much for dropping by The Media Copilot and sharing your thoughts.

Paul Gewuerz (40:55)

Yeah, this was fun, Pete. I always enjoy these talks. It gets me fired up. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Pete Pachal (41:01)

Cool. We’ll do it again soon.

The post AI didn’t kill Local News. Could it actually save it? appeared first on The Media Copilot.

This episode is sponsored by: Adobe Acrobat

This week on The Media Copilot, Pete Pachal sits down with Taneth Evans, Head of Digital at The Wall Street Journal, to explore how one of the world’s leading news organizations is navigating the AI revolution.

Rather than chasing every new AI trend, Evans shares how the Journal evaluates emerging technology through a simple lens: Does it genuinely help journalists do better work or help readers better understand the world?

From AI-powered investigative tools and newsroom workflows to personalized storytelling and adaptive content, Evans offers a thoughtful look at how AI can strengthen journalism without compromising trust.

“So many times in the past few years, I’ve said to people, what would you do with a building full of journalists at your disposal? No newsroom feels like it has enough resources… How can we use AI to help us get closer to the answers to that question?” — Taneth Evans

The conversation explores why journalism is evolving beyond a single article format into flexible experiences tailored to how each reader prefers to consume information, while keeping facts, reporting, and editorial standards at the center.

Sponsor:

The new Adobe productivity agent orchestrates tools and models to generate images, text and rich content like presentations, podcasts and social posts, while also powering conversational PDF editing in Acrobat.

With new PDF Spaces capabilities, users can combine files, links and notes into interactive, shareable spaces for research, collaboration and content creation. VICE News, Kid Cudi and celebrity event planner Mindy Weiss are already using these tools to build trust and deeper engagement with their audiences.

Link: Do that with Acrobat: AI-Powered PDF workspaces | Adobe Acrobat

What we cover

• How The Wall Street Journal evaluates new AI technologies

• Why audience needs come before AI innovation

• The rise of personalized and adaptive journalism

• AI tools transforming investigations and newsroom workflows

• How AI can create entirely new reader experiences

• Why trust, attribution, and media literacy matter more than ever

• The future of publisher owned experiences in an AI driven world

• Why great reporting becomes even more valuable in the age of AI

As AI changes how information is distributed, the challenge isn’t simply adopting new technology. It’s preserving trust while creating better ways for people to engage with journalism. Evans argues that the future belongs to news organizations that use AI to deepen their relationship with readers, not replace it.

Why this matters

W

News consumption is changing rapidly. Readers increasingly expect personalized, accessible experiences while publishers face growing competition from AI powered search, chatbots, and automated summaries. The organizations that succeed will be those that combine trusted reporting with innovative experiences that make journalism more useful, more engaging, and more relevant. This conversation offers an inside look at how one of the world’s leading newsrooms is preparing for that future.

About the 👤 Guest

Taneth Evans Head of Digital, The Wall Street Journal

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/taneth-evans-b35877162/

The Wall Street Journal: https://www.wsj.com

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.

Enjoyed this episode?

Subscribe to The Media Copilot on Substack, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite app. On YouTube? Tap the Like button and Subscribe to the YouTube channel. For more AI tools and resources built for media professionals, visit mediacopilot.ai.

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 (00:25.442)

Hi, welcome to the Media Copilot. It’s a podcast about how AI is changing media, news, and communication. My name’s Pete Pachael. I cover tech for a long time as a journalist, and now I have deep conversations with the media people, the builders, and the creators, or are all answering the question how will we get information in the future? And how will that change the jobs in the industries whose business is information, especially media?

One of the biggest questions in media right now is whether AI will make journalism more useful or more generic. We already live in a world of apps and services that are trying to make information as convenient and efficient as possible. I think AI summaries, chatbots, personalized feeds, the list goes on. That creates a huge challenge for publishers, especially premium publishers. AI might be able to help you serve your readers better, but how do you do that without flattening the reporting or weakening the brand or worst of all, breaking trust?

My guest this week sits right in the middle of that question. Taneth Evans is head of digital at the Wall Street Journal, which is obviously one of the most important news organizations in the world. Her work touches everything from audience strategy to newsroom culture to the product roadmap, and that includes the journal’s approach to AI. The journal’s already moved forward with some AI-driven features, including AI summarized bullet points, some reporter tools, and even a bespoke chatbot that was specifically made for iPhone coverage.

But what I think makes the journal’s approach interesting isn’t just the tools. It’s the broader idea that journalism itself may become more flexible. The same reporting can turn into different formats, whether that’s summaries, explainers, audio, video, interactive experiences, or even something else, all depending on what the reader wants. So today we’re going to talk about how the journal thinks about AI, how a global newsroom with serious standards decides what’s safe to ship.

And what audience ac audiences actually want from AI-powered news products. I’m excited to get into it. quick 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. All right, let’s get started. Taneth Evans, welcome to the Media Copilot.

Taneth (02:40.285)

Thanks for having me.

Pete Pachal (02:42.35)

it’s my pleasure. so I want to get into all that cool stuff, AI experiences, what everything you are in charge of there at the journal and and how it’s rapidly progressing along with AI. But I’d love to hear a little bit more about you and your background. So tell me a little bit about, you know, how you how you came to be at the journal, how your role has evolved there, and if in particular like how it’s evolved alongside AI.

Taneth (03:07.345)

Hmm. I’ve been at the journal for just over three years, three years in February. I arrived with the new editor-in-chief, Tucker, new at the time. I had worked with her previously in London, where she was editor of the Sunday Times, and I was lucky enough to be brought along for the ride when she came to the journal. And so it’s actually, although it’s been three years, feels like…

a lot longer because well humbly what we’ve achieved feels like more than three years work. We arrived and kind of set a broad newsroom strategy and spent a long time articulating that and making sure we had all of the resources and skill sets we needed to action it. And then as you say, think we were, know, AI technology was obviously very important three years ago and it was obviously going to become more important.

But I think we were all surprised, I certainly was, by the speed with which it started taking over lots of conversations, both in the workplace and beyond, really. And so it did become a larger part of my job very quickly. It’s interesting when you think about who should own these things in a newsroom. There’s so many things that come along with it. It’s technology, yes, but it’s also…

governance and strategy and to what end we will employ this technology. And so I think I was kind of in a very lucky position really to be the obvious person to have it sit within my team. But we very quickly spun up a working group in the newsroom that was led by our now head of data and AI, the wonderful Tess Jeffers. And I think that’s been one of the really important things

that we created that working group very quickly. Firstly, to talk about governance and guidelines and how we would speak to the newsroom about AI. But now it means that that group is on the forefront of discussing emerging technology and stress testing it and thinking about how it should look and work in the newsroom. And so nothing is handed to us. We’re very much on the front foot of creating those guidelines and

Taneth (05:28.765)

hopefully making it a little bit exciting and less intimidating too.

Pete Pachal (05:34.538)

So you this working group has sort of evolved into the main sort of filter, I guess, as new technologies come out and and new techniques sort of develop to that does it go through this this group and and what is that process like?

Taneth (05:51.504)

Yeah, there are representatives from all corners of the newsroom in that group. there are people from my team, the digital team, content strategy, audience development, all of that good stuff. There are also people who represent video, audio, all of the different formats, visual storytelling on the website. But then we also have representatives from standards and the investigations team and

reporters that are very active and interested in using the technology. And so it means that those discussions are lively and exciting and we really kind of drill into things very deeply. And I think that’s why it’s been successful. It’s full of people that are very curious and excited. And so we can, you know, look at a proposition or a new technology and very quickly say, but practically, what does this mean?

Pete Pachal (06:45.954)

Mm-hmm.

Taneth (06:46.552)

what end would we use this rather than, you know, talking about things.

Pete Pachal (06:51.554)

And how’s like how what is your filter when you approach that, right? Because you can think about it on across a number of dimensions. You can think about it like, you know, product and efficiencies. You can think about, you know, what the audience is it enhancing some kind of experience or just getting things to them quicker? you know, overall distribution, I’m sure that sort of factors in. and are there any like how how do you like to approach these and you know what within those filters, like

How do you sort of identify red lines and sort of like how where you would s definitely say no?

Taneth (07:24.731)

It’s interesting, isn’t it? Because people will often say, so what are you doing with AI? And it’s kind of, it’s too big of a question. What does, what does it mean? Because as you rightly said, it’s, it’s so many things. It’s a distribution layer, one that I think will fundamentally change, maybe has already fundamentally changed how consumers will act out there in the wild. It’s internal tooling, yes, efficiencies, but also

things to make us more powerful. It’s experience. It’s, know, ways that we might augment our products and offer net new things to readers. And so the first, for me, the first layer we have to go through is, this a need? Does this meet a need? Does it meet a need that we have in the newsroom or does it meet, crucially, one of our audience needs? Because I don’t, I’m not so interested in doing things that

will be cool and that no one will look at. I love doing cool things, don’t get me wrong, but I want people to see it. I want it to be for a reason, you know? And the other, I suppose big thing that I try to advocate for is in the newsroom, I want us to think about using AI for net new, for powerful things. I already alluded to it, but efficiencies are great and we all need them, but I’m…

less interested in them. I’m really, really interested in the stuff that we can do that we wouldn’t be able to do before. So many times in the past few years, I’ve said to people, what would you do with a building full of journalists at your disposal? No newsroom feels like it has enough resources. I mean, ever, but particularly now. How can we, how would we answer that question? And how can we use AI to help us get closer to the answers to that question?

Pete Pachal (09:06.722)

Right.

Pete Pachal (09:18.146)

Nice. So what what would you say is been net new? Like what what has excited you the most over the past couple of years and where do you see that particular aspect, not just the efficiencies, but the the new stuff? Where’s that going?

Taneth (09:32.333)

In terms of stuff that we’ve already shipped or started using, we have a lot of internal tooling that I think is really exciting and that I’m excited about. Internal tooling doesn’t sound exciting, does it?

Pete Pachal (09:43.534)

Believe me, I’m excited about it. My reader my listeners are excited about it. We’d love to hear about the internal tool bit.

Taneth (09:49.32)

Good. Well, firstly, in investigations, I think that’s the very obvious place that lots of people have started. It’s allowing us to parse and pattern match within kind of large swathes of information in a way that maybe humans could do, maybe in some places they couldn’t. Similarly, helping us to pinpoint information in large documents or large pieces of information. Again, humans…

could do that, it would take us a lot, lot longer without this technology. And then similarly, we have built within the newsroom, a proprietary tool that we call Orca. That is a tool that turns messy audio into structured data so that we can do lots more with audio files. for example, we took

over 2200 hours of podcasts and had Orca listen to them and help us search around information in order to write a report on how the MAGA base and particularly the podcasting coming from that were reacting to the Epstein files and how that changed their attitude towards the government. That is something that we could have done without this tool but it would have taken

a really long time. was, as I say, huge, huge amounts of audio. And so again, this is something that we just simply could not have turned around in that time without this technology. And so although maybe not net new, I think it’s creating net new outputs in terms of speed and scale of our storytelling, certainly. And then away from investigations within our news wires, our news wires audience is slightly different to the general audience, of course.

and so they have different needs. One thing that we’ve done that I’m really excited about is a new feature called company talks. and that is AI generated reports based on company announcements. So we will take a company press release. We will allow an AI generated report to be created and then an editor will check it. That is net new coverage that we before didn’t offer to our newswires audience. So it’s additive to the experience and similar.

Pete Pachal (12:13.708)

And to be to be clear on that, I just want to clarify that. So it’s like it’s not just rewriting the release, I assume. It’s like it’s you’re bringing context in the journal’s history of report whatever I you tell me, like it’s bringing context to to it, correct?

Taneth (12:27.315)

We’re telling readers what it means. But also similarly, because it’s a news-wise audience, actually often they just want a well-written understanding of what that report says. Exactly. Yeah. We’ve also been able to offer our news wires in different languages using AI translation. So we now have Chinese, Japanese, Korean, French, German. Again, it’s a kind of net new offering that we can take out to clients.

Pete Pachal (12:34.732)

I see. In an expected sort of templated way. I get it. Yep.

Pete Pachal (12:55.01)

Nice. Go on.

Taneth (12:56.487)

Go on. And then one that we haven’t yet shipped, I think is exciting. So we should talk about it is in the new experience kind of realm. So we’re working on a product right now called Backstory, which will live in our app and it will allow readers to on a given article, understand the context and the background to that story. And one reason I’m really excited about this feature is that it’s really come from a need both

Pete Pachal (13:02.616)

Cool.

Taneth (13:26.277)

internally and of our audiences. So I’m sure you’ve experienced this, that when writing on a long running storyline or topic, you have to put in the B matter, you have to put in the background because it could be that a reader’s coming fresh to that story. Sometimes it weighs our stories down and we want to kind of trim them or get to the new stuff more quickly, but our readers have an expectation that we catch them up if they don’t know.

what’s already happened. The backstory will allow us to offer that to the readers that need it, but for the readers that don’t, get them more quickly into the crux of the new information. I’m really excited about that because I think it takes a problem that we have had for a long time as an industry, and it really kind of almost revolutionizes how we might tell those stories.

Pete Pachal (14:18.03)

Yeah, I think most reporters sort of default to somewhat and again, this is no fault of their own. They’re great on their beats, but they’ll default to sort of speaking to people who are sort of keeping up with everything they’re read writing. And as a as a newsroom leader, I and and sort of a long t you I I had to sort of beat that out of myself as I was doing. And so now I find I kind of do the opposite. But to your point, those are different readers and they both deserve to be served, right? Like in other words, don’t bog down the people who are keeping up, but also there are

take into account the people that haven’t necessarily been following every development. And if that can burden can shift from the the writer or even the editor and AI can sort of take on some of this interpretability, that that becomes very interesting and potentially powerful. And that’s kind of what I wanted to steer toward because I know you’ve written about this, about adaptive content and sort of the the next

sort of phase of that to me feels like what just generally called liquid content, which is like, you have all this facts and reporting and and you can turn that into whatever, you know, you could turn it into an article, you can turn it into podcast, etc. So, sort of break down your thinking on that, on sort of where that can live, because we’ve been talking about sort of newsroom tools. I’m sort of shifting that a little bit into a reader experience. how do you how do you sort of organize your thoughts around like what

the tool is a tool for the storytellers and what’s a tool for the people interpreting it.

Taneth (15:48.964)

Mm-hmm. So I’m very excited about this. And I have been thinking about this for a long time. And when I first started thinking about what people now refer to as liquid content, I was like, I’m a genius. I’ve cracked it. I fixed journalism. And then I became obsessed with it. And I was talking about it and quickly realized that, of course, I was not the only person to see this technology and have this idea. And that’s because it’s a really real problem, I think. that is that personalization, I think,

Pete Pachal (16:02.988)

Ha ha ha.

Taneth (16:18.195)

We have not cracked personalization as an industry. New generations of readers expect things to be highly personalized, whether they explicitly tell us that, or whether just in their everyday experiences on social media, on shopping channels, on Netflix, they are used to seeing things that they like and that they want to engage with. At the same time, we all lived through

personalisation of social platforms doing not great things for news. You know, those feeds became highly personalised and people ended up in quite concerning, sometimes filter bubbles. And so as an industry, we really didn’t want to exacerbate that problem. And so we have, think, shied away from personalisation. Not that’s a kind of real overgeneralisation. And of course, lots of news publishers are doing

really cool things with personalization. But I think as an industry, you know, we’re not offering yet highly personalized experiences. And I think that’s partly because we’ve only looked at personalization through the lens of topic. And we’re saying, this is a really important story, and we don’t want to hide it from people. And actually, it’s the same from a reader perspective. For us at the journal, readers tell us that they want a curated experience, they want us to tell them

what we are seeing as the most important stories that day. so personalization of topic becomes a little sticky for all of those reasons. I think this technology has allowed us all to think about personalization in a slightly different way. And that’s in personalization of format of how a reader might consume something. And that could look like lots of different things. It could look like, me this story, but give it to me.

in audio or in video you know I’m on my commute and it’s 13 minutes long give me a 13 minute audio version of this story it could be that we see that Pete only ever watches videos on the journal app give it to him in a video version I think that’s the first step I think we take it further by personalizing the actual story itself so not just format but

Taneth (18:38.373)

If we see that I engage better with stories that are led with a case study because I’m an empath and I need to see how it affects humans, then what if our building blocks of that story could be rearranged in such a way that we give me that version? And if the story is about a company that I invest in, so I actually just want the numbers really quickly up top, let’s give that to me instead. And so then your information becomes kind of

building blocks that could be arranged on the fly for the right person in a way that is the right way to consume for them.

Pete Pachal (19:17.218)

Hmm. Yeah, it seems like as you were speaking about that there, that the way the the way I am understanding how memory is working in these models, you know, they sort of build up this file over time. and I know OpenAI is doing sort of even more advanced things, but it does feel like this is the media equivalent of that, that it’s like it’s it’s sort of taking that idea of memory. I was like, and it so it’s not even anything I I I specify.

in the app, it just sort of understands, this is from my behavior. I’m doing this. So starts to build up this memory. And sure, there might be some setting I just turn on at the very beginning of this, but over time the experience of coming to the journal would just evolve to just match my needs and not at both sort of the app level, the story level. is that sort of a fairly accurate picture of kind of what you’re you’re thinking about?

Taneth (20:11.405)

Yeah, and I do think audiences are going to expect it. They are going to come to expect it. Especially as, you know, time is our biggest competitor and younger generations are turning away from the news. And one of the reasons we know from studies that one of the reasons that they’re turning away is that they don’t feel that the news is relevant to them. And I think this goes a long way into taking

the news of the day and giving it to people in a relevant way that they feel will impact their lives.

Pete Pachal (20:46.476)

Right. I know you didn’t mean time the publication there, but I was just to clarify for the listeners, I was like, Wait, time is? No.

Taneth (20:51.315)

No, time the concept, I’m sorry.

Pete Pachal (20:58.252)

Yeah. Yeah, no, I get it. I get it. so interesting. So we’re talking about liquid content adapting this stuff. It’s great. So what what changes about the journalist’s job then as a reporter or editor? Anything? do they have to sort of get ahead of some of these formats? and if it sort of becomes this thing where the final content’s malleable, I think sometimes reporters fear that, well, I’m just like a fact.

Taneth (21:01.171)

you

Pete Pachal (21:24.588)

I’m putting facts in a in a robot or an engine and it’s just creating things with it. tell me tell me what your vision is on the sort of news production side.

Taneth (21:34.558)

think firstly, there will always be a place for a well-written narrative yarn. know, we have seen books are still here. People have predicted the end of books for a long time and they’re still here because we want them. And I think similarly, kind of long, well-reported narrative pieces of journalism.

will survive. That’s the first thing that I should say. But there are some forms of journalism that are there to deliver new pieces of information. And I think that is where this kind of technology will play. And so I do see a future that a really brilliant reporter will spend the majority of their time going out and getting facts and filing them in those building blocks.

the new piece of information, the quotes, the characters, the rights of reply, the images, all of these kinds of pieces of metadata that we can use technology to build many, different end results. And look, frankly, I think a lot of reporters will be pleased to hear that. Lots of reporters tell me that the best part of their job is going out and finding the facts. And so I think reporting is going to become

a very premium requirement, you know, like I think it’s going to be more important than ever. And but that’s not to say that there won’t be it’s kind of a spectrum, you know, that everything’s everything’s a spectrum, there will be I really do believe then a premium on the also the really in depth well written kinds of journalism to

Pete Pachal (23:25.708)

Nice. And you you mentioned earlier, you know, there’s some reporters who sit on the committee you talked about, and they’re all obviously probably enthusiasts. I’m sure within the newsroom there’s a spectrum there too of people who are all in on this. It’s great. They see it as a very great tool, and some folks that might need some some coaxing. And can you give me a sense of kind of what the transition’s been like? I mean, transition, I guess, in terms of like the AI era, cause some come to think of it, but like

How have you been able to get catch up some of those folks who might be a little skeptical of like this whole AI this all AI thing and how it affects their job and their industry?

Taneth (24:07.513)

Mm-hmm. I think that it’s actually been an interesting challenge because it has come at us with such a speed, this technology, that everyone, you could take a room of people and everyone would have a slightly different level of experience or understanding. So other things you can kind of launch training sessions and get everyone together and talk about it. This is, it has been quite a unique challenge.

And one way that we’ve tackled it in the newsroom is by running kind of brown bag, know, lunch and lunch, come along and see how other people are using this technology in their work. They’ve been really successful sessions because I think AI can sometimes feel like we’re doing a lot of like kind of broad talking about it. And then you kind of get to it and you’re like, well, I kind of had that myself. I was like, yeah, AI, great. And then I sat down and I was like, hmm.

So what should I do? And it was kind of only when I started to practically get my hands dirty that I was like, starting to see more opportunities within my kind of personal sphere and workflow. And so those brown bags have been a great learning tool for the newsroom because they’ve seen how their colleagues are actually practically using things and that sparked ideas. It also means that we can have good like no dumb questions sessions that people can.

really at any level come and say help me. Again, all credit for this must go to my head of data and AI Tess who’s run these sessions. And the next thing that she’s running during the summer are a series of vibe coding sessions. So again, getting people in, it’s this thing that they all kind of vaguely know about and talk about, but then practically don’t know where to start. And so again, it’s kind of putting the technology into everyone’s hands and saying,

Okay, come on, let’s talk about your ideas and where you might use it.

Pete Pachal (26:05.516)

Nice. Yeah, these vibe coding I think is obviously very powerful, but it also has this thing that it it if it’s not managed well, it feels like you know, it just becomes this wild west and people kind of doing duplicative stuff sometimes. I’m not sure what stage you’re at or whatever, what you’re thinking about, if there’s a long term vision for that. But I’m curious if you’re thinking about like how you would transition from someone doing something interesting and very cool with vibe coding and

putting that into like some actual product if there’s enough innovation there and enough interest.

Taneth (26:40.023)

Mm We’ve seen a few examples of internal tooling. So Brian, who’s a member of our social media team, vibe coded a solution for creating social posts, which I just totally oversimplified. Poor Brian. And he kind of brought it to the AI working group who took a look at it said, Yeah, pretty cool. And then we were able to

Pete Pachal (26:56.195)

Mm-hmm.

Taneth (27:07.703)

ship it and offer it to the whole social media team. We’re lucky that we have good allies in product who can help us kind of jump in and make these things a reality. But I think we’re still kind of starting with that. But again, I must give all credit to the working group. They are the front line of this, you know, the ideas come in, they have a look, they sometimes augment them. And they’re really very aware of everything that’s happening in the newsroom. To go back to your point of kind of

launching similar things and everyone kind of having similar problems. think again, we don’t want to innovation. You want people to get their hands dirty and try things, but then equally you don’t want 10 different tools out in the world doing the same thing. So I think right now our work is at such a scale that it can go through TAS and the working group. And so that really helps us. What that looks like.

when we have a thousand people vibe coding things, TBC.

Pete Pachal (28:13.036)

Nice. So I know you guys did some stuff with chat bots and chat experiences. I had Joanna Stern on back when you had first launched the Joanna bot a bit ago. I she’s no longer with the journal, but the I was curious what you learned from that specifically and and what your take is on like chat bots in general vis a vis media sites. Do you have a do you have any thoughts there?

Taneth (28:36.369)

Yeah, I’m reluctant to launch a chatbot, capital A, capital C. I think not just with AI, we’ve seen for many, many years that if you put too much expectation onto a reader or a user, they become overwhelmed and they don’t know where to start. I mean, of course they do. If you said to someone, talk to this generic chatbot about the Wall Street Journal.

Pete Pachal (28:40.386)

Hmm.

Taneth (29:02.503)

you know, where would they start? And it’s the same with when we make, you know, user interaction, but when we build user interaction into our journalism, we have to prompt, we have to help them. It’s, you know, that’s on us. And so I think the Joanna Bot works so well because it was a specific kind of niche thing. Readers were prompted, they were helped along. We also did the same with Lars, which was our tax bot, which it was utility.

offered readers a service and said this is what we will give you. You can ask us your very specific questions when it comes to tax for example. I think that’s what you need to do. You need to help someone into the experience because if you offer them look at anything wherever you want, whenever you want, however you might like to do it, I think we’d be disappointed in the engagement rate.

Pete Pachal (29:32.334)

Mm-hmm.

Pete Pachal (29:55.021)

Yeah, I I totally I’m seeing that too. In other words, like the more successful ventures into this idea of a chat experience are always sort of super targeted, whether it’s something like on iPhones or taxes or in other places I’ve seen election stuff. you know, we’ll see how it evolves. But I also think this transitions nicely into the whole idea of discovery because I think that also like it’s like what do you expect from a media

specific experience on something like the journal versus like your broad chat GPT perplexity Google AI overview experience, right? And so like you know, I sometimes feel like media companies doing chatbots is like media companies doing Facebook or you know, their own social network or something like that. It’s just it’s I don’t not what we’re looking for. but again like it’s all to me it’s it that transition, okay, well what are they looking for from things off the journal? And how does the journal content then interact with that?

and so obviously more and more people are using AI to to use information. the journal is pretty famously in some some has deals and and lawsuits among the major AI companies. Won’t get into that. But I’m I am just curious on how you in your role think about the the broader public getting good information from these and the journal sort of being a part of that in some

Taneth (31:17.244)

Yeah, it’s interesting, isn’t it? Because there are two like broad routes you could go. There’s one to

kind of go all in on your own product and try to get people directly. And there’s one to make your journalism as easily possible as possible so that people can still encounter it. And I don’t think that’s an AI specific problem. I think it’s been the same. We had Facebook and some articles. We’ve had all of these. These questions have arisen before. I think broadly, we don’t want to disappear.

Pete Pachal (31:29.39)

Mm-hmm.

Taneth (31:54.897)

is a good example. is a slight aside from AI, but TikTok is a great example. I’m not driving traffic from TikTok, but I want us to be on there because I want that generation of users to know that we exist. And it’s a similar thing. So, you know, we are thinking about how we show up in those experiences and making sure that our information is visible. But really what this has doubled down for me is the idea of us being a destination in ourselves. I think

in, I don’t know, 10 years time, maybe, maybe I’m overshooting that even. think websites won’t be visited by humans, they’ll be visited by our agents who are coming to collect the information of the day. But our apps will become really important because that will be the human touch point. It will be people coming directly to the journal. And so we need to give them very, very good reasons to have that direct relationship with us to come.

directly to us and not get our information elsewhere. And so that means our information being excellently accessible, yes, and in a wonderful, pleasing experience. But it also means offering other things. Community, you know, how might you come and talk to other readers about our journalism? Live events, coming and seeing us in person, Chakra, having actually a human relationship with us. It could be other…

features that you can only get at the journal. We need to think really, really carefully about fostering that direct relationship with readers at the same time as allowing our information, I think, to appear in a well attributed way in other experiences.

Pete Pachal (33:38.467)

Yeah, and and Fr I take it then you practice some amount of you know generative engine optimization in what you’re doing to make sure it’s machine readable and that you know I know there’s that’s there’s a difference between that and like just blocking unauthorized crawling, right? But if it is authorized crawling, you know, like you want to make it as as as machine friendly as possible. Is that fair to say that that’s the approach?

Taneth (34:02.076)

Yeah, yeah, but I mean, and I say it kind of like, what is that optimization? You know, like, we’re all kind of talking about it as if it’s a thing. And I’m like, is it a thing? I don’t know. I mean, I’m seeing a lot of promises that you can optimize in different ways. And I think there are things that we can do to make sure that our, you know, our journalists information is up to date and that we are very, you know, our metadata is good, but equally.

I don’t think there are like tricks yet. Maybe there will be, but I think, and actually I think the same about SEO too, that I think build a good website in a way that the internet works and do really good journalism and good things will follow. mean, you sure, I’m sure that’s a purist view, I, I, I’m skeptical that you can really kind of game this.

Pete Pachal (34:34.904)

Right.

Pete Pachal (34:53.794)

No, no.

Pete Pachal (34:58.552)

Well, I also think AI is evolving so rapidly that what rules you might sort of conclude at now might might be radically different as they get sort of better at interpretability. That said, I’m happy to do a brown dagger anytime you want on what I’ve what I’ve put together on this. I I think about it quite a bit, GEO and that sort of thing. so I I I’ve again I’ve read some of what you’ve written. I really liked what you’ve said before about pulling back from traffic chasing.

And you know, having sort of different KPIs than sort of the traditional ones that I think, you know, everyone’s kind of moving away from because obviously search and social just aren’t aren’t really are are being reduced in terms of their discoverability for content. Can you talk a little bit about like how you’re thinking about success with regard to both, you know, the story level and also just sort of just broadly as the journal as a as an enterprise?

Taneth (35:57.341)

I actually don’t think it has drastically changed for us. We arrived three years ago and quickly articulated to the newsroom that we wanted to become a truly audience first publication. What does that mean? It sounds very straightforward. It sounds simple almost. But if you really stop and think about it, it’s…

quite revolutionary, it’s stopping at every decision and saying, what does the audience need from this? Because often the audience need is not what our instinct says journalists might be.

So the newsroom has really successfully kind of come aboard with this ethos. It means that our journalism is, we have something called the digital pause. We ask everyone to pause at the start of any process to ask who is the audience for this? What do they want? What are their needs? Therefore, what should we do? And I think that’s, and I don’t just think I can see,

in our engagement rates that it’s reactive readers are reacting well to that. They’re spending more time with us. They’re finding our journalism more readily. And they’re canceling their subscriptions at lower rates, which is, I suppose the ultimate goal is our net number of subscribers and the amount of money that we get from them.

Pete Pachal (37:18.146)

Nice.

Taneth (37:26.74)

So in the newsroom, I think we will continue on that path regardless of AI, of creating journalism that people want to read and then once they start reading it, they stick around. I use read and I shouldn’t use read. also, they may be watching it, they may be listening to it, they may be experiencing it in other ways. And so I think…

For me, the hallmark of a good strategy is that you’re not changing it all the time. And so really the goals that we set out three years ago are still our goals now. We’re using different tactics. But ultimately it is to grow our audience and retain them.

Pete Pachal (38:06.636)

Nice. So as we wrap up here, I try to pin down the people I talk to about things they are both worried about and hopeful about for AI and how it’s changing the media ecosystem. So I’d love it if you could give me one of each. What are you what are you what are you kind of losing sleep over with regard to AI? And then what is like the thing that was wow, this would be amazing if if it were to come to fruition.

Taneth (38:34.93)

I’m worried about facts and their attribution. I’m worried about facts or misinformation taking on a life of their own if people are no longer going directly to the source. I am very excited about and supportive of…

AI technology, but I, like other people, can’t help but notice the confidence with which it gives me information. And I fear that if, if we don’t work really hard on media literacy and people questioning facts when they’re not coming from a trustworthy source, then I fear, I fear misinformation.

and similar kind of filter bubbles. I think that’s my kind of existential bit.

Pete Pachal (39:33.55)

No, it’s good. Hallucinations are I do feel like they’re kind of inherent to the technology, in my experience anyway. Every time there’s a good a new model, I’ll do some kind of rudimentary query and it pretty quickly I get some very confident, incorrect answer. And it’s like, okay. so yeah, I think that’s a fair worry.

Taneth (39:52.338)

And I mean, of course, you know, the internet isn’t built for LLMs, it’s built for Google, you know? And so, of course, it’s going to get things wrong. We’re kind of not helping it right now. I do think it will improve as the output is only as good as the input. I think the input right now, as in the entire World Wide Web, is like not structured for this. So of course, that’s going to happen. I do think it will improve. And I do think as we all learn,

Pete Pachal (40:05.902)

Mm.

Taneth (40:22.024)

good stuff in, good stuff out, we’ll get higher quality answers. But that will be contingent on a lot of education and making sure that everyone kind of has access to the right technology and information, I think. Okay, on brighter note, I’m really hopeful that this technology will allow

Pete Pachal (40:41.144)

Nice. Yeah. What’s the thing you’re hopeful about?

Taneth (40:50.716)

us to deliver information, good quality facts, news and information to more people. Because I hope that more people will want to interact with the kind of news and information that we’re delivering them because we’re doing it in a more effective manner. I spoke earlier about younger generations turning away from news. And I fear that I think it’s

really, I think it’s an emergency that we are creating things that are relevant to generations in a way that they want it. And I really think that AI is going to help us do that in a way that we’ve never been able to do before.

Pete Pachal (41:31.82)

Nice. We’ll leave it there. Tenneth Evans, thanks for coming by and sharing your thoughts.

Taneth (41:35.912)

Thank you so much.

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