As artificial intelligence becomes more embedded in newsrooms, a key debate is emerging: Will AI displace journalists or help them do their jobs better. 

At Reinvent: A Video Innovation Summit, hosted by Northeastern University on March 21-22,  media innovation expert David Cohn, a senior director at Advance Digital, argued that AI-powered newsroom tools could be a journalist’s ally. Speaking on the panel, “Newsroom 2.0: Harnessing AI for Video and Beyond,” Cohn explained how automation can streamline production tasks—freeing reporters to focus on community-driven reporting. 

“If a journalist at its core, in my opinion, is the ability to understand a community, to have the relationships with the right people, and to sort of find what is new and important to that community and reflect it back, more time spent doing that and less time, you know, formatting things is better, right?” says Cohn. “So, how can we automate the formatting so that they can spend more time reporting? is, again, I think a valuable proposition.”

Emphasizing that journalism will be strengthened, not threatened, by automation, Cohn encourages journalists to embrace new technologies into their newsrooms. He believes that in the near future, AI has the potential to create brand new jobs at news organizations. Such as “head of newsroom automation” or “prompt engineer,” the latter of which has already begun emerging in other industries. 

Cohn’s stance, shaped by his experience building newsroom workflow at Advance Local and his own start-up in the background, is clear: AI isn’t the enemy–it’s an assistant.

“I think it is a mistake to, like I said, you know, kind of stick our heads in the sand like an ostrich and pretend like it’s not there,” Cohn remarks. “I have often said in my career that actually technology companies and media companies, there’s a future where they are indistinguishable from each other.”

At Advance Digital, Cohn and his team have developed what they call the “reporter’s toolbox” – an internal AI platform that supports writers with headline generation, grammar checks, and editorial suggestions. 

“I have a first draft, and I kind of want feedback from an editor before I send it to my actual editor, right? It’s almost like proofreading before,” Cohn explains. “And so the ‘editor’s eyes’ workflow takes your first draft; it looks for spelling and grammar mistakes; it looks for writing tips. Maybe you could word things differently and make it a little bit clearer. Information gaps, you know, what information might a reader like get stuck on and be missing?”

As AI tools become widely available to the public, newsrooms are turning to automation to boost productivity. For local outlets under financial strain, these tools could help cut costs and support reporting. Automation offers potential benefits for organizations of all sizes.  

Many journalists remain skeptical of the technology, believing AI poses a significant risk to newsrooms. One major concern is that large language models (LLMs)  can pull articles from behind paywalls and deliver it to users for free–often without credit or compensation. This undermines subscription-based business models many local news organizations rely on to survive.

AI also raises environmental and ethical concerns. According to the UN Environment Programme, AI data centers emit methane, generate electronic waste, and consume vast amounts of fossil fuels, water and energy. During Cohn’s panel, one attendee asked how the public should navigate these issues as AI becomes more widely adopted in journalism. 

Cohn acknowledged the environmental impact but argued that the long-term benefits of adopting AI in journalism will outweigh the costs. He compared it to reporters driving gas-powered vehicles–toools that are imperfect, yet necessary. Rather than avoiding AI tools, he urged journalists to learn how to use them responsibly and get ahead of the curve.

“In a world where media companies and technology companies are indistinguishable from each other, it really becomes important to decide what organizations are going to create the values upon which we build content,” Cohn expresses. “And I think it is a mistake to seed that ground and say, ‘Oh, we’ll let the tech companies figure it out, and I’m sure we’ll be able to do good journalism on top of it.’ To me… that’s like, wishful thinking, or like, you know, it’s a great hope. But hope is a really bad strategy sometimes.”