Ivar Krustok: How Estonia’s Media Giant Builds AI That Actually Works
In Estonia, Delfi Meedia has built one of the strongest foundations for AI in journalism. With one of the highest digital subscription rates in the world, Delfi has moved beyond the buzz around AI to put it into everyday practice, supporting both its journalism and business.In this episode, host Nikita Roy is joined by Ivar Krustok, Chief AI & Innovation Officer at Delfi Meedia. Ivar breaks down how a small-market publisher is shipping AI that actually helps journalists: from live cross-language translation and newsroom bots to an in-house “company ChatGPT” toolkit wired into 25 years of archives and public records.Key topics include:•Delfi’s three-bucket AI strategy: everyday newsroom tools, experimental long-term projects, and company-wide literacy.•Why Delfi built its own “company ChatGPT” toolkit to search 25 years of archives.•How bots and agents are transforming dashboards into conversational tools for subscriptions, ads, and editorial performance.•Lessons from AI experiments, from court-case monitoring that surfaces hidden stories to audience-facing image generators.•The ongoing challenge of scaling AI literacy across hundreds of staff while keeping adoption practical and trust-centered.Sign up for the Newsroom Robots newsletter for episode summaries and insights from host Nikita Roy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Djordje Padejski: Why AI Literacy Belongs at the Core of Journalism Education
As a new academic year begins, journalism schools face a defining challenge: how to prepare students for a profession being reshaped by AI.At Stanford University, Djordje Padejski is leading the way. A veteran investigative journalist and now associate director of the John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships at Stanford, he created one of the earliest AI-focused journalism courses at Arizona State University before bringing it to Stanford last year. His classroom is less lecture hall and more lab, where students test AI tools and also learn to examine them.On Newsroom Robots, Djordje shared how he structures his course and what journalism schools must do to prepare the next generation of journalists.Key topics include:Why journalism education must move beyond teaching AI as just a tool and instead frame it as a socio-technical phenomenon.How to embed AI literacy in classrooms by separating hype from reality, contextualizing the history of AI, and examining its cultural and ethical limits.Practical strategies Djordje uses to structure his Stanford course, from lab-style experimentation to peer-led discussions that uncover both opportunities and pitfalls of tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and NotebookLM.The importance of teaching students not just how to use AI but how to critically assess its strengths, biases, and limitations.What a future journalism curriculum or degree built around AI might look like, and how educators across disciplines can prepare the next generation of reporters.Sign up for the Newsroom Robots newsletter for episode summaries and insights from host Nikita Roy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Sara Beykpour: The Next Chapter in News Aggregation
In this episode, host Nikita Roy is joined by Sara Beykpour, co-founder and CEO of Particle News — the AI-powered news aggregator. Launched in November 2024, Particle blends multi-perspective coverage, concise AI-generated summaries, and a bias meter that makes framing visible, giving readers both speed and trust in the same experience.Key topics include:How Particle’s “Reality Check” process works using multi-source input and verification passes to minimize hallucinations and produce more accurate summaries.Strategies Particle uses to maintain reader trust in an era when AI-generated summaries can quickly erode it.How Particle surfaces bias with a meter that shows how coverage leans left, right, or center and updates as stories develop.The role of topic-based personalization in avoiding filter bubbles while still giving readers tailored news feeds.Sign up for the Newsroom Robots newsletter for episode summaries and insights from host Nikita Roy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Florent Daudens: How Open-Source AI Puts Newsrooms Back in the Driver’s Seat
What if the future of journalism isn’t locked behind the paywalls of big tech companies, but freely available to every newsroom willing to embrace it?Too often, the conversation around AI in newsrooms centers on big tech, like OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini. These are powerful tools, no doubt but they come with caveats: mainly cost, limited transparency, and little to no control over where your data ends up.But there’s another world of AI rapidly evolving in parallel and it might be journalism’s best path forward: open-source AI.In this episode of Newsroom Robots, host Nikita Roy reconnects with returning guest Florent Daudens, now the Press Lead at Hugging Face, one of the leading platforms powering open source AI. Formerly a newsroom leader driving AI integration at Canada’s Radio-Canada, Florent now sits at the heart of the open source AI movement.Key topics include:Why open source AI matters for journalism and how it compares to proprietary modelsThe rise of AI agents and what they mean for editorial control and user experienceHow compressed, privacy-first models running on laptops and phones could change the gameThe environmental cost of AI and how newsrooms can make more sustainable tech choicesWhat news apps might look like in an agent-powered futureHow newsrooms can start experimenting with open source AI (no dev team required)Plus, Florent shares 20 must-know open source AI tools for journalists, explains how writing is building in the age of AI, and discusses why owning the experience, not just the content, will be key to journalism’s survivalSign up for the Newsroom Robots newsletter for episode summaries and insights from host Nikita Roy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Fabian Heckenberg, Naja Nielsen & Gard Steiro: The Hard Truths About AI Every Newsroom Leader Can’t Ignore (Recorded Live at Nordic AI in Media Summit 2025)
In this live episode of Newsroom Robots, host Nikita Roy moderates a panel discussion recorded at the Nordic AI and Media Summit in Copenhagen. The conversation features Gard Steiro (Editor-in-Chief and CEO of VG in Norway), Fabian Heckenberger (Managing Editor and Senior Editor for AI at Süddeutsche Zeitung in Germany), and Naja Nielsen (Media Director at SVT in Sweden and former Digital Director at BBC News).They discuss how news organizations are approaching the complexities of integrating AI into editorial workflows, organizational strategy, and audience experiences. The conversation focuses on the tensions, trade-offs, and open questions that newsroom leaders are wrestling with. Key topics include:How AI is shifting from isolated projects to infrastructure across newsroom operations, and the implications for leadership and cross-functional teams.Why VG uses a fixed one-year runway model to evaluate AI experiments, and what happens when projects don’t deliver measurable outcomes.The role of transparency and relevance in building trust with audiences, particularly for younger and emerging user groups.SVT’s approach to organizational learning, including how leadership can empower experimentation without centralizing all decision-making.What interdisciplinary teams look like in practice—drawing on SZ’s experience embedding editorial staff into product and tech teams.Challenges with prioritization: choosing between maintaining legacy systems, launching new GenAI tools, or refining user experience.Why personalization can’t rely on a human-in-the-loop model, and how AI agents may soon take on quality assurance roles within content pipelines.Emerging revenue considerations: from small-scale funding streams and philanthropic support to fundamental questions about what people are actually willing to pay for.The episode wraps with a candid exchange about whether the article format has outlived its usefulness in an era of personalized, multimodal news delivery and what that means for the future of storytelling and journalistic impact.Subscribe to the Newsroom Robots newsletter for more insights and updates from host Nikita Roy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Looking to explore the intersection of AI and journalism? Influential thought leaders in the industry join data scientist and media entrepreneur, Nikita Roy, each week to explore what's next with AI and its implications for the media landscape. In each episode, industry experts discuss how automated newsrooms have the potential to change journalism and uncover opportunities to optimize workflows and increase efficiency without compromising journalistic integrity. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Ireland