ST. PETERSBURG, Florida — As artificial intelligence continues its rapid, disruptive march through the media landscape, small and medium-sized news organizations face a unique crucible. While large metro dailies and multinational conglomerates marshal vast engineering resources to build proprietary models, local and regional newsrooms are often left scrambling. They must adopt powerful, unfamiliar technologies while maintaining razor-thin margins, managing skeptical newsrooms, and preserving the ultimate currency of the press: public trust.
To bridge this critical gap, The Poynter Institute officially announced today the inaugural cohort for Leading AI in the Newsroom. This pioneering leadership program is specifically designed to equip journalists who have become the de facto AI experts within their local newsrooms. These are the reporters, editors, and producers whom colleagues turn to with complex questions about automation, generative tools, and digital workflows, even as they navigate the shifting technological paradigm themselves.
Bringing together 33 handpicked journalists from across the United States, the program merges Poynter’s historic core competencies: rigorous leadership development and cutting-edge artificial intelligence training. Rather than serving as a basic software tutorial, the initiative aims to forge a new generation of newsroom architects capable of leading systemic technological change, fostering cross-departmental communication, and actively dismantling internal resistance.
Executive Overview: A Defining Moment for Local Media
The stakes for modern newsrooms have never been higher. Generative AI promises unprecedented efficiencies in transcription, data analysis, and audience engagement, but it also introduces profound risks regarding copyright, algorithmic bias, and the erosion of audience trust.
The Leading AI in the Newsroom program directly addresses these fault lines. By combining intensive, hands-on workshops with peer-to-peer evaluations, the curriculum tackles the most sensitive issues facing contemporary publishers:
- Safeguarding editorial integrity and accuracy.
- Addressing legitimate staff anxieties surrounding job security and creative displacement.
- Establishing transparent, ethical frameworks for AI deployment that stand up to public scrutiny.
"This is not just about teaching journalists how to prompt a chatbot or automate a routine task," said Jennifer Orsi, Vice President of Publishing and Local News Initiatives at Poynter. "It is about empowering local leaders to shape the destiny of their newsrooms. We are ensuring that the adoption of AI is driven by journalistic values, rather than dictated by tech companies or rushed out of a sense of mere survival."
The program is made possible by the Knight-API Endowment Fund, drawing critical support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the American Press Institute, and the Arizona State University Center for Media & Communities, which is hosting the inaugural in-person intensive.
Detailed Chronology and Program Architecture
The intensive learning journey is structured to blend immersive, face-to-face strategic planning with sustained, remote mentorship and peer collaboration.
Phase One: The Los Angeles Intensive
The program kicks off at the end of October with a rigorous two-day, in-person workshop hosted by the Arizona State University Center for Media & Communities in Los Angeles. During this foundational phase, participants will dive deep into case studies, dissecting real-world successes and failures in newsroom automation.
Led by a distinguished faculty featuring Poynter’s Alex Mahadevan, Tony Elkins, Kelly McBride, and Sitara Nieves, the cohort will engage in collaborative workshops. These sessions will utilize Poynter’s renowned AI Ethics Guidebook as a foundational compass, enabling leaders to systematically evaluate risks, uncover operational opportunities, and design meaningful benchmarks to measure the tangible impact of their AI initiatives.
Phase Four Weeks: Virtual Deep Dives and Expert Insights
Following the Los Angeles kickoff, the cohort will transition to four live virtual sessions running through early December. This phase introduces specialized external experts to challenge and broaden the participants’ perspectives:
- Audience Perception and Transparency: Benjamin Toff, associate professor at the University of Minnesota, will present empirical research on how audiences view AI in journalism. His sessions will focus heavily on transparency, clear disclosures, and methods for processing constructive audience feedback.
- Evaluating Experiments: Christine DiGangi, vice president of AI editorial operations at People Inc., will provide actionable frameworks for auditing ongoing AI experiments. DiGangi’s insights will help leaders determine which initiatives warrant scaling up and which should be sunsetted before consuming vital resources.
The Deliverable: Tailored Implementation Plans
The program culminates not with a certificate of completion, but with a concrete operational asset. Every participant will graduate with a customized, practical AI implementation plan tailored specifically to the structural, financial, and cultural realities of their home newsroom.
Supporting Context & Metrics: The 2026 Cohort
The inaugural 2026 class represents a broad cross-section of American media, spanning public radio, digital start-ups, metropolitan alternative weeklies, and regional print powerhouses. The inclusion of leaders from diverse sectors underscores how deeply artificial intelligence has permeated every corner of the journalistic enterprise.
Members of the First 2026 Leading AI in the Newsroom Cohort:
- Christopher Ayers, News Director, 90.5 WESA
- Tyler Bassett, Director of Digital Media, Bonneville Phoenix
- Drew Bennett, Executive Producer, Spectrum News 1
- Tyson Bird, Editorial Product Manager, American City Business Journals
- Kate Bradshaw, Assistant Features Editor, Bay Area News Group
- Christina Chkarboul, Staff Reporter, Los Angeles Business Journal
- Dawn Clapperton, Vice President of News, NBC6 South Florida / NBCUniversal Local
- Glenn Cook, Executive Editor and Senior Vice President of News, Las Vegas Review-Journal
- Ryan Ellison, Digital Director, Central Florida Public Media
- Annie Feidt, Managing Editor, Broadcast, Alaska Public Media
- Susan Gonzalez, Editor, Social and Platforms, Chalkbeat
- Izzy Gould, Senior Director of Content, AL.com | Alabama Media Group
- Alex Helmick, Managing Editor, WABE News
- Yvonne Krumrey, Reporter, KTOO
- George LeVines, Editor, Gun Violence Data Hub, The Trace
- Denise Lockwood, CEO, Racine County Eye
- Jonathan Martin, Editor-in-Chief, Cascadia Daily News
- Candice Mays, Project Director, Black Voice News
- Charles Minshew, Deputy Managing Editor of Data Journalism, AI and Newsroom Innovation, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
- Michael Olson, Deputy Managing Editor, MPR
- Michelle Quinn, Executive Editor, EdSource
- Clara Ramirez, Senior Digital Producer, NBC and Telemundo Los Angeles
- Fahmida Rashid, Managing Editor, Technology & Features, Dark Reading, Informa TechTarget
- Matheus Sanchez, Digital Director, WLRN
- Andrea “Andy” Sanchez-Villafana, Managing Editor, Voice of San Diego
- Sky Schaudt, Senior Digital Editor, KJZZ 91.5 FM
- Tom Scheck, Investigations Editor, The Minnesota Star Tribune
- Akash Sinha, Managing Editor, Charlottesville Tomorrow
- Violeta Trevizo, Director of Streaming & Digital Innovation, Arizona’s Family / Gray Media
- Carlos Virgen, Senior Editor, The Modesto Bee
- Joshua Wilson, Managing Editor, Appen Media Group
- Ashley Yeager, Deputy Multimedia Editor, Science News
- Michelle Zenarosa, Deputy Political Editor, COURIER News
Future Outlook: Building an Industry-Wide Resource
The launch of Leading AI in the Newsroom is part of a much broader, long-term strategic initiative by The Poynter Institute to secure the ethical foundations of modern reporting. As artificial intelligence technologies evolve at a breakneck pace, the insights, case studies, and operational templates generated during this program will not be kept behind closed doors.
Poynter intends to synthesize the findings from this inaugural cohort and make them publicly available. By scaling these resources across the broader journalism industry, the Institute hopes to establish a standardized baseline for responsible, transparent AI adoption.
Ultimately, the program views artificial intelligence not as a replacement for human judgment, but as an amplifier of it. By preparing local leaders to navigate the cultural and technical hurdles of automated tools, Poynter is helping to ensure that the vital watchdog functions of a free press remain robust, trusted, and deeply human for decades to come.
About The Poynter Institute
The Poynter Institute is a global nonprofit organization dedicated to addressing society’s most pressing challenges through the enhancement of journalism. Serving as the gold standard in journalistic excellence, Poynter trains professionals, convenes media leaders, and champions press freedom worldwide. The Institute houses several prestigious entities, including the Newmark Ethics Center, the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), MediaWise, and PolitiFact. To learn more about Poynter’s ongoing work to foster trust and transparency in the global information ecosystem, visit poynter.org.