At WKDZ in Cadiz, Kentucky, Beth Mann has an extensive collection of vintage radios on display in a small museum.
It holds about 350 radios dating back more than a century. They depict how the technology has evolved over the decades, starting in the 1920s.
“The biggest change that probably impacted radio and technology ever, even beyond the internet, was the invention of [the] transistor,” Mann said. “[The] transistor changed everything, including Apple phones and computers. And you know, the transistor changed the world, really.”
More than 70 years after the first transistor radio hit the market, a new technological revolution that could have major implications for journalism and other industries is booming — artificial intelligence.
The newsroom at WKDZ, which is a part of Edge Media Group along with stations in Hopkinsville, Madisonville, Princeton and Elkton, is figuring out how to integrate the newer technology into their workflow.
“I think it may be a little bit early to have an exact written policy of, ‘This is exactly what we will do or exactly what we won’t do,'” said Mann, Edge Media Group’s president, CEO and owner. “It’s developing daily. It’s technology that’s changing, but we do discuss AI every single day, and it is part of our conversation and training in all of our weekly meetings.”
A study published earlier this year by Graphite, a firm that specializes in helping companies with search engine optimization, found that AI-generated articles published on the internet outnumber articles written by humans.
Edge Media Group isn’t the only news organization contending with AI in their work in west Kentucky. Paxton Media Group, which owns several papers in the region and WPSD Local 6 in Paducah, has an AI policy posted on its homepages. The editor and publisher of the Crittenden Press, a local weekly newspaper, said the publication uses AI. WKMS defers to the NPR Ethics Handbook for its AI policy, but the newsroom does not employ generative AI.
Best practices for using AI
Alex Mahadevan, the director of MediaWise and the AI Innovation Lab at the Poynter Institute, advises newsrooms on the ethics of implementing AI. He said the big question in journalism is how much AI-generated content audiences should see and how to disclose when it’s used to maintain trust with them.
“We’re in a very difficult time in which trust is the lowest it has, I think, ever been for journalists and journalism,” Mahadevan said. “At the same time, you have people constantly reading stories about how AI hallucinates and how bad it is for the environment.”
Mahadevan said a study from Poynter shows the public is uncomfortable with journalists using AI even for tasks like data analysis.
“What we’ve been putting front and center is teaching people how to establish transparent AI ethics guidelines, which helps people feel more comfortable, how to disclose and when to disclose how they use AI,” he said.
Examples Mahadevan provided of ways to help an audience learn about AI include writing columns, shooting videos or hosting events about how the technology works.
He said guidelines help protect an organization’s reputation and better inform audiences.
“The most important thing is to explain to the audience why it makes their lives better,” Mahadevan said.
Keeping up with the times
Edward Marlowe, a reporter at WKDZ since mid-2021, said two years ago, he would’ve told someone it was out of the question if they’d asked him about AI. His opinion has changed, and he now uses it for certain tasks.
“‘Learn it or lose it,’ is what I kept hearing, just from media associates, people in different circles,” Marlowe said. “The constant chatter of, ‘Figure it out or get left behind.'”
But Marlowe said he still has concerns.
“I do think it limits creativity,” Marlowe said. “I think that while you can create some really kind of neat things with it, there’s a creator out there that’s probably willing to do it, and I think that gets lost in artificial intelligence.”
Mann, with WKDZ and Edge Media Group, said the people at her organization and across the industry are “all over the board” with their thoughts on AI.
“I have some journalists who are totally opposed,” she said. “They believe that journalism is pure journalism, and there should be no outside help or assistance for the journalist. But then we also have some people who say, ‘I can see how some of these tools could help me do my job better.'”
Her biggest concern about AI is if it were knowingly used in a dishonest manner for “harmful things.” Mann doesn’t force her staff to use the technology.
Being in the business for 41 years, she said she remembers when the first computer came to her organization. The industry has also previously changed with the internet, cell phones and apps, with reactions similar to AI.
“The launch of the internet and all of the knowledge that came with the internet was almost as drastic as AI,” Mann said.
Mann said she doesn’t see how using AI for research is that different from using Google. But she doesn’t want it to be used to write just any story.
“If we’re going to hire journalists, then I want you to be a journalist,” Mann said. “I think to completely use AI to write a story and to put your name on it would be unethical.”
Marlowe said he has used ChatGPT a couple of times for sources on specific data he’s researching, and that he’s cited ChatGPT in those stories.
For press releases, he said he uses AI to clean up the wording so he isn’t reading them directly on air. He said he reviews and edits the copy produced by AI.
Marlowe hasn’t been attributing rewritten press releases to AI, like the story of a new Dollar General opening in Rockcastle. Instead, he said he puts News Edge Newsroom as the byline for all press releases, rewritten either by him or by AI.
Mann mentioned a handful of potential reasons when to use the News Edge Newsroom byline.
“We’re just now starting to use AI some with press releases, and we haven’t really fully utilized it to write a story from a media release yet, but we do have a policy that we do rewrite media releases,” Mann said. “We do not use a media release as released, and I personally think that that’s an area that we probably could look at, because we’re using someone else’s facts. When that media release comes in, those facts have been provided by someone else.”
Mann said a lot is asked of journalists today compared to the past, and that people in positions like hers can provide tools to simplify some processes and leave more time for writing. One example she pointed to is rewriting material for different formats.
“If [a reporter] properly wrote one full-on story and used AI with their own story that they wrote for a rewrite, ‘Rewrite the headline for this, shorten this story, lengthen this story,’ is that wrong?” Mann said.
WKDZ and Edge Media Group don’t have a written policy about AI usage. Marlowe has been creating his own rules around it, but he doesn’t know his colleagues’ exact processes.
Gaps in local news coverage
The Crittenden Press, which covers Crittenden County and surrounding communities in Kentucky, is a weekly newspaper that was formed in 1879. In addition to the weekly print, the organization has a robust digital presence on many social media platforms along with other fully digital products.
Chris Evans, the publisher and editor, is one of two full-time employees. He said he has a history of trying to adapt with technological changes in the journalism industry, noting he taught himself some HTML to create a website for the Crittenden Press in 1999.
“I think we were among the first newspapers in all of west Kentucky that had a web presence,” Evans said.
Over the past year or so, Evans has started incorporating AI. A survey from the Associated Press about using it initially piqued his interest.
“It got me to thinking a little more about it,” he said. “If the Associated Press is asking about this, maybe I need to take another look at it.”
Evans said he looked into ChatGPT after a conversation with a local health care administrator. After working with the program, he realized how it could help him with his work.
A series of AP webinars about AI usage in journalism made Evans feel more comfortable with the tool and helped him establish his “guardrails.”
“If I could boil everything down that I learned in that … use it, use it, use it, but check it, check it, check it, and never publish or produce anything for public consumption that has not been read and checked by a human being,” Evans said.
Evans said he uses AI to help him upload sports statistics and make news briefs from event flyers. Other uses include simple graphics, data analysis, transcription, proofreading for biases and even creating a second voice for some of their productions like podcasts.
At the time of the interview, the Crittenden Press did not have an AI policy published on their website, though Evans said he started considering a letter from the editor about AI usage at his publication.
“We trust it to drive cars. We trust it in the health care industry to diagnose illnesses. We trust it to fly airplanes, to run locomotives,” Evans said. “Why would we not trust it to create a community calendar in the newspaper business? Why would we not trust it to help us write a very complicated article?”
Cost is a major factor in why Evans believes smaller newspapers could benefit from AI, especially those that can’t afford another employee.
“I look at it like it’s an employee that I pay $20 a month, when if I actually went out and hired someone out of college — a cub reporter that probably would know a whole lot less than AI in some regard — would probably cost me $3,000 a month,” Evans said. “I don’t want it to hurt our industry, but I couldn’t afford to hire somebody that was $3,000 a month right now.”
The local media landscape has withered over the last two decades. According to The State of Local News Project from Northwestern University’s Medill Local News Initiative, nearly 40% of local newspapers in the country have disappeared since 2005, along with nearly three-quarters of jobs in that field. This has created news deserts across the country, including six counties in Kentucky that don’t have a news source and 89 counties with only one news source.
“If it can save community journalism so that we do not have news deserts, then it is a wonderful, remarkable tool for this industry,” Evans said. “I think it can save some of these smaller newsrooms that are without enough help. And people just become weary and tired and frustrated and just give up. This gives them a little bit of hope that they’ve got a little bit of help, and I think that will help them continue to carry on. It’s helped me.”
This story was produced by the Appalachia + Mid-South Newsroom, a collaboration between West Virginia Public Broadcasting, WPLN and WUOT in Tennessee, LPM, WEKU, WKMS and WKU Public Radio in Kentucky, and NPR.
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