They Think AI Can Do More Than It Actually Can: Practices, Challenges, & Opportunities of AI-Supported Reporting In Local Journalism

TL;DR

This study explores how local journalists in Germany interact with AI and data, revealing limited AI use but openness to its potential, and offers recommendations to enhance AI-supported local journalism practices.

Contribution

It provides empirical insights into local journalists' experiences with AI and data, highlighting challenges and opportunities for improving AI integration in local newsrooms.

Findings

Journalists have limited awareness of AI's capabilities.

There is willingness to adopt AI for data processing.

Recommendations are provided for better AI-supported reporting.

Abstract

Declining newspaper revenues prompt local newsrooms to adopt automation to maintain efficiency and keep the community informed. However, current research provides a limited understanding of how local journalists work with digital data and which newsroom processes would benefit most from AI-supported (data) reporting. To bridge this gap, we conducted 21 semi-structured interviews with local journalists in Germany. Our study investigates how local journalists use data and AI (RQ1); the challenges they encounter when interacting with data and AI (RQ2); and the self-perceived opportunities of AI-supported reporting systems through the lens of discursive design (RQ3). Our findings reveal that local journalists do not fully leverage AI's potential to support data-related work. Despite local journalists' limited awareness of AI's capabilities, they are willing to use it to process data and discover stories. Finally, we provide recommendations for improving AI-supported reporting in the context of local news, grounded in the journalists' socio-technical perspective and their imagined AI future capabilities.