Tech
AI Alone Isn’t Enough to Power Your Newsroom Transformation
Everyone’s talking about AI. Understandably so. Artificial intelligence technology, particularly GenAI, is developing at an exponentially rapid rate, and it is not an understatement to say it is revolutionising the world and how people live in it (for better or worse…). The news publishing industry is a big player in this innovation race and has experienced shifts in editorial processes as a consequence. However, one should not speak about AI technology without addressing the down side.
For example, Google now creates its own AI summaries for searches and places it at the top of the search results list, thereby lessening the need for users to click elsewhere for their information, as it has already been gathered and summarised for them. While convenient for the reader, this reduces traffic to the sources of the summarised information. For news publishers, this new status quo could have a marked impact as their homepages may not get the traffic they used to. Moreover, it cannot be denied that GenAI has the potential to diminish our critical and creative thinking capabilities by way of “replacing” it through overuse or even dependence; this risk extends to the journalistic voice and how the news is communicated to the general public.
This writer’s goal is as follows: to shift the focus away from the buzz and towards the brass tacks: technology that empowers its human users, enables journalists to share their voice and supports editors to collaborate with ease independent of their location, all without threatening the creative spirit or key reader touchpoints. In short, technology that is dedicated to the human element, to elevating the human experience and to helping news publishers evolve and thrive.
For example, many tech tools (including ones that are AI-driven) that optimise editorial workflows do so without taking away from the editorial spirit or diminishing exposure. That’s why Livingdocs provides news publishers with a content management system that consolidates and integrates the right tools that have proven efficacy in supporting newsroom workflows so editors can truly focus on telling their stories.
Speaking of telling stories, let’s take a look at the storytelling timeline and how our comprehensive content management system – complete with industry-specific newsroom transformation tools – can support editors on every step of the way.
Ideation: Planning
Any story starts with an idea. An idea is then translated into pitch. And once the pitch is defined, the planning process can begin. Planning extends to determining what length and kind of piece will be created, which deadlines must be adhered to, how the story would align with other planned topics… How can this process be streamlined and aligned within a CMS so that key elements aren’t lost in translation at the start? Through collaboration tools.
Livingdocs is known for offering real-time collaboration tools that allow all the related players to team up early on in order to give the nascent story momentum. These tools enable people across departments to communicate transparently and efficiently with simultaneous editing capabilities, comment notifications and tracked changes. Establishing strong collaboration from the start – as opposed to further down the timeline – within a single unified system helps optimise the entire editorial process and, ultimately, lays a robust foundation upon which the story can be built.
Another element we consider is integration. Even if a CMS is a one-stop shop, news publishers may have system preferences when it comes to planning tools. Therefore, a Livingdocs is able to integrate outside planning systems in order not to disrupt any planning workflows.
Creation: Cross-Team Collaboration and Industry-relevant features
Once planning is settled, the creative process can begin. The same collaboration tools that support editorial teams at the start continue to contribute to successful storytelling further on in the process. The original author is able to track the history of the changes to a text made while getting feedback from colleagues.
But a story isn’t just text; it’s images, too. Visual storytelling is not just complementary to a text; it is essential. This is why Livingdocs supports the image handling workflow and ensures it is an intuitive breeze for users. For example, Livingdocs enables editorial staff to decide how images exist within a system. We provide optimised ways for users to archive, delete or revoke images in order to keep the image handling workflow streamlined, along with having an easy way to store original images along with their variant while ensuring only the right image versions are delivered.
Livingdocs also allows editors be able to edit images while within the editing phase itself – whether making aesthetic adjustments to achieve a desired look or redacting number plates and faces if images contain sensitive information. Editors can also move images easily and intuitively from the side panel in a text, even many at a time with multi-image drag and drop capabilities.
Beyond the text and images, how can editors amplify their storytelling with tech? By leveraging tools that are perfectly suited specifically for the news publishing industry. For example, if editors want to enhance their story with real-time updates, they can look to our live blogging tools like tickers.
In the meantime, while all these creative tasks are carried out by humans supported by machines, non-creative tedious tasks can be taken care of in the background with AI-driven automated workflows via the Livingdocs Assistant Platform.
To note, if there are actions being done by machines, in the interest of integrity and the EU Act on AI, it is mandatory to be transparent about an action’s origins. Therefore, we provide the functionality to distinguish between human-generated actions and content and those produced by a machine, and steer priorisation according to whether or not the creator is human.
Curation: Pages and Print
Once a story is complete, it’s time for the curation stage, including page management and distribution. Where the story will go, how to showcase it strategically and how to best promote it with readers across all relevant channels and products are all questions that come into play. This is why we are sure to serve news publishers withunctionalities to support high-quality hyper-curation.
In order to allow for complex page management and align pages efficiently with a particular interest – brand, region or theme, for example – we provide editors with the ability to define components and containers that are conditional and designated to be delivered only for certain brands or according to other parameters. Another way we facilitate complex page management is by enabling users to manually pin a chosen article teaser to a position inside a container with remaining spaces filled automatically by a teaser list, deduplication included, for a pragmatic blend of machine-driven automation and human curation.
This functionality can be enhanced even further with the ability to manually boost certain articles for a set amount of time, which is particularly useful if automatic updates on algorithmic sections are frequent and important stories get pushed down too quickly.
Moreover, Livingdocs allows journalists to edit individual article teasers in real time, without changing the article itself. This allows teasers to be coherently incorporated into the theme and picture of a given page, without affecting its SEO impact.
Speaking of SEO, having large-scale automation and optimised curation for metadata tagging is another way to have tech take care of tedious tasks that don’t take away from the creative process, and Livingdocs supports this, as well
When it comes to print, while many news publishers are focused on a digital-first strategy, they are not planning to abandon their print product. This is whyLivingdocs has a way to connect the digital workflows to those of print. Livingdocs enables editors to effortlessly create a print version of an article from the online one via a specialised copy flow with dedicated UI elements, with possibilities for manual changes and full overwrites, if necessary.
The big picture
It is clear that there are a myriad of tools available to news publishers looking to thrive in the digital age that are genuinely helpful and don’t present any risk of reducing online presence or snuffing out the human creative spark. It is upon this principle of balance that our product is shaped. Rather than narrow the focus to AI only, media companies should focus on the big picture to include the full spectrum of technology tools that are proven to facilitate their workflows, finding the perfect balance between machine efficiency and human genius to support the production of world-class content.