Guest Essay

AI isn’t a journalist: What newsrooms can do about it to build trust and engagement with their communities

By Lynn Walsh

October 7, 2026

AI is getting better at summarizing information, scraping news content, and repackaging information for communities.

I recently led a conversation with The Lenfest News Philanthropy Network exploring two questions I continue to think about as I consider AI’s impact and influence on the information ecosystem:

1. What if AI’s limitations are actually an opportunity for newsrooms to build trust and grow revenue?

2. What if AI is making the human work behind original reporting more important, not less?

To start the conversation, I set up one of the current challenges newsrooms are facing when it comes to AI: AI tools increasingly summarize, aggregate, and repackage journalism, often without clearly directing people back to the journalists and newsrooms that produced the original reporting. This directly and negatively impacts newsrooms’ bottom line in the short term and long term — but what if there’s an opportunity to turn those challenges into opportunities? 

What if, instead of being upset and frustrated by how AI is and can negatively impact the news industry, we were to focus on how we can take advantage of what AI cannot do and use that messaging and education to bring more people in our communities to us and our accurate, ethical, and responsible content? By differentiating ourselves from AI content, we have an opportunity to explain what journalism provides that a generated summary cannot.

More people prefer news produced entirely by humans compared to news produced fully by AI, according to research from the Reuters Institute. That same research also found people’s preference for AI being used in news increases if there is human involvement in the process.

Research I have led for Trusting News has produced similar findings: people want a human involved in the process and are more comfortable with journalists using AI when guardrails and policies ensure accuracy and ethical conduct. In addition, I have found audiences want help understanding AI: how it works, its impact on their community, the environment, and the information they see and consume. In the most recent research, I learned that when journalists provided AI literacy content to news consumers, their trust was likely to increase in that news organization.

With this in mind, what if instead of simply warning people about AI, newsrooms helped people understand AI and used that conversation to make the value of journalism more visible?

When journalists, fundraisers, and others in the information ecosystem considered this possibility last month over Zoom, four leading ideas emerged.

• Create and find ways to be with the community in person
• Make the humans (and human elements of reporting) central to your messaging
• Become the place (and people) your community leans on to learn how AI works
• Recommit to the basics of journalism

Create and find ways to be with the community in person

AI and technology cannot (at least right now) show up for people like real humans can. It cannot replace real human connection.  

Let’s find ways to lean into that. Some ideas that surfaced during the conversation included:

• Newsrooms hosting more in-person events and gatherings in the community
• Help organize initiatives (or participate in them) when your community is in need, such as after a natural disaster 
• Have reporters wear “not a robot” pins

This doesn’t always have to be about doing more, though. We could also focus and prioritize having more conversations with people in our communities, show empathy and authenticity in our reporting, and get out in the field more while reporting and newsgathering. 

Make the humans (and human elements of reporting) central to your messaging

What if you ran a campaign that essentially said: We’re not AI. Here are the people behind the reporting.

Then create videos introducing your journalists. Show them reporting. Show what they do that an automated system cannot easily replicate: knocking on doors, attending public meetings, calling sources, asking follow-up questions, noticing something that doesn’t make sense and going back to investigate it.

You could even have some fun with it. One idea that was shared is something a cooking section could try: “Here’s a recipe that won’t poison you. Because a human tested it.”

Another idea: A photography or arts team could have a public head-to-head challenge with AI. Whose images turn out better?

The point isn’t that humans are always better at everything (AI performs really well and sometimes is better than humans at certain tasks); it’s about highlighting the value of human work. Work AI can’t do. That is both an engagement opportunity and, potentially, a fundraising opportunity.

Become the place (and people) your community leans on to learn how AI works

News organizations have an opportunity to become guides through an increasingly confusing information ecosystem.

This could be as simple as:

• Publishing a weekly AI literacy tip
• Creating a page explaining how AI-generated content works
• Showing examples of AI-generated local information
• Explaining how bots and automated accounts interact with your own news content and where that ends up

One idea shared during the session was to try a “mystery shopper” experiment. Have a journalist ask an AI-generated news site a simple question: Who reported this? Where did this information come from? Who can I contact if it’s wrong?

Then document what happens.

When I created AI literacy content for newsrooms to share through Trusting News, we saw real impact: Not only did people respond saying they found the content useful and wanted more of it, a slight majority reported increased trust in the news organization after viewing just one AI literacy example. We also found in-person events where people learn more about how journalists use AI can increase trust.

The point isn’t to be anti-AI, it’s to demonstrate a very practical difference between consuming information from a system and having a relationship with a local newsroom.

Recommit to the basics of journalism

While this may be the least flashy idea, it could be the one that’s easiest to implement. 

Let’s commit to being really good journalists. Let’s take a look at the ethical principles we value and commit to them consistently. We may think we do that, but our communities are not always seeing it or believing it.

So, let’s be consistent when we make a mistake and regularly correct it. Let’s also make it easy for people to contact us about stories. Whether they have a request for a correction, a comment about how it could have been better, or an idea for a follow-up story — make it easy for them to get in touch, and let’s be sure to respond to them. Let’s commit to answering emails and responding to user questions. 

Let’s commit to reporting basics of newsgathering by attending the city council meetings in person so we can see who is in the room and connect with people. Let’s make the effort to actually talk to people for stories and not rely on email. Call the person again. Knock on the door. Investigate the tip someone in the community told you about.

Let’s lean into what makes journalism a relationship, not simply a product. AI may be able to summarize what happened, but your newsroom can ask what will happen next, who was affected, what is missing, who disagrees, and what the community should know now.

Let’s act now

I think these approaches could help newsrooms strengthen both their relationships with communities and their bottom lines. But I’m worried the opportunity is limited.

As AI gets better at aggregating and summarizing news, people may become increasingly used to receiving the basic who, what, where, and when without seeking anything deeper. And if those summaries become “good enough,” the standard for what people consider useful information could change.

The danger isn’t necessarily that people will believe every AI-generated story. It may be that they stop expecting anything more than the summary. 

That’s why the time to act is now. AI may be able to tell people what happened, but newsrooms have an opportunity to show people why having humans accountable for information gathering and publishing still matters.