Report

Dear AI: Please sell more ads. Sincerely, everyone.

March 5, 2026

This article originally appeared on Blue Engine Collaborative’s LinkedIn.

When America’s newspaper executives tap into the latest AI tools, they point them directly at their bottom line – and they’re trying a lot more than you might think.

This month, Blue Engine Collaborative and The Lenfest Institute for Journalism surveyed 50 American newspaper executives (see full list at the bottom of this post!) in our third Newspaper Executive Insights poll.

We asked two questions: If your AI assistant could build one solution for anything in your business, what would it be? And have you built anything with AI that others could replicate?

The number one answer to the first question was decisive: help me drive revenue.

More than a third of respondents described an AI solution focused squarely on sales — whether that’s smarter ad targeting, automated proposals, revenue forecasting, or CRM tools that free up salespeople to do what they do best.

Salesbot, reporting for duty.

“Sell ads and help businesses tweak the ads to get the best results,” said David Dunn-Rankin , president of D-R Media & Investments, in an answer that captured the blunt ambition of many respondents.

John Garrett, founder and CEO of Community Impact, wants AI “helping account executives be more efficient in getting things done so they can spend more time selling.”
Patrick Dorsey, publisher of The Santa Fe New Mexican, painted the fullest picture. He wants “an engine that better targets advertising customers and specifically customizes bundled multimedia advertising packages that maximize audience and results for the customer and revenue for us — all with proven ROI that makes the investments a no-brainer.”
Reed Anfinson, publisher of the Swift County Monitor-News, wants AI to help with “sales outreach to non-local businesses” — a pain point for small-market publishers who know there’s revenue beyond their immediate geography but lack the bandwidth to chase it.
A northeastern executive is already putting AI to work in ad sales via a custom proposal tool: “We can take needs assessments, gauge against individual industry information and then run against our product lines and rate cards to create customized proposals.”

The AI ghost in your operations machine

New Mexico’s Dorsey also articulated something echoed by several respondents: a broader hunger for “back-office tools across all departments that streamline routine processes to improve efficiencies by at least 10%. Those four hours per week could then be used to take a more strategic look at the functions of that department and develop ideas to improve our overall business.”

Where are American newspaper execs looking for those proverbial four hours per week?

Lee Bachlet, SVP of growth and innovation at CherryRoad Media, wants to “automate AR and AP data entry and invoice application. These are repetitive and resource-heavy tasks.” CherryRoad handles thousands of checks monthly and is actively building toward full automation. “Full automation, or as close as we can get to that, is important to our ability to handle more and more volume while driving costs down for ourselves and our customers.”
Matt Paxton, publisher of The News-Gazette in Lexington, Virginia, wants “a simple, intuitive CRM solution for small newspapers, integrating existing databases and spreadsheets, and incorporating a calendar and an email function. This could also comb the assembled database and suggest prospects to salespeople.”
A Western newspaper executive dreams of AI that could “handle all of our newspaper pagination” — a time-intensive production task ripe for automation.

There’s ample space for innovation in business analysis that could power greater efficiency, too.

Kevin Hall, publisher of Georges Media Group, wants something more predictive: an AI tool that can “forecast projected revenue gaps in the future based on current trends and then identify best revenue opportunities to more than fill those revenue gaps.”

Heidi Wright, executive director of the Independent Newspaper Group, wants AI to help where bandwidth is thinnest. “If my AI assistant could build one thing, it would be something that takes work off the plates of rural and small-town publishers who are wanting to grow their digital audience,” she said. “AI could help close the gap between intention and execution, which is where so many well-meaning digital efforts in small-town newsrooms fall apart.”

Superpowered journalism

While most responses focused on business opportunities, our executives see substantial opportunities to increase the impact of local journalism through AI-assisted means.

Lauren Gustus, CEO and executive editor of The Salt Lake Tribune, sees potential for improved efficiency by turning one body of reported journalism into multiple formats via a content management system (CMS) or other tool.

Benjamin Hall, associate publisher of the Cape May County Herald, looked at exposing more information to a journalistic observer, wishing AI to “bring radical transparency to local government planning, behavior, results, costs and our reporting of the same.”

Kit Slack, executive director of The Hyattsville Life & Times, went further: “A legislator accountability database, searchable by constituent address — campaign finance info, legislation sponsored, votes, with links to primary sources.” (Then she added, with characteristic generosity: “There, steal my idea and see if you can make some money!”)

And where is this help going to be felt most acutely? Bachlet of CherryRoad Media sees a critical role for AI in editorial, particularly for smaller operations: “There are content applications that are completely legitimate without impacting journalistic standards. For small operations trying to function without extensive editorial resources, this kind of AI assistance is critical for the future.”

One place where this could be delivered directly to audiences? “Customer rich, personalized newsletters,” as one southwestern executive put it, “drawing from various community markers, based on preferences and intent.”

What’s already working

A lot more than might meet the eye. One executive perhaps captured the industry’s current moment best: the AI experiments are happening, but “it’s still under the hood!”

Many publishers noted their use of AI in daily operations today in something like how Slack’s team at The Hyattsville Life & Times already uses AI for “proofreading, formatting, organizing data, language translation, and to help summarize and search in transcripts of interviews and public meetings. All with review by humans.”

Here are a few other ideas you may want to consider reaching out to some of these executives to discuss:

Hall’s Georges Media Group is using Relay to “help customer service automatically go through notes and scripts to deliver feedback to customers easier and quicker,” and a separate tool that “analyzes trends in story conversions specifically related to content types and publishing times.”
Gustus of the Salt Lake Tribune reports that AI has “accelerated our grant-writing process for smaller opportunities.” Her team uses it “to help capture our thinking for grant proposals, and then to check our applications against the questions being asked.”
A Western newspaper executive is “working on an AI tool that will present a daily brief from our digital archives. This will be shared in our daily newsletters, web and print.”