Just a couple of years ago, AI-related conversations at media companies were largely still stuck on basic chatbots and ethical hand-wringing. But a lot has changed since then. There is now an explosion of creativity and advanced deployments happening across media companies. We are talking about “agent swarms” orchestrating complex workflows, “vibe coding” that turns journalists into app developers and automated video engines generating thousands in new revenue overnight.
During the panel, “AI in Action: Workflows Evolving Today,” moderated by this columnist, four leaders, including Dana Neves, senior managing VP, Gray Media; Kerry Oslund, VP, AI strategy and business development, The E.W. Scripps Company; Jonathan Leff, global editor, newsroom AI and financial news strategy, Reuters; and Lindsay Stewart, founder and CEO, Stringr, proved that the tools being built right now are akin to a superpower for the modern newsroom. The era of hesitation is dead, they asserted; the era of the “bionic journalist” is officially here.
The New ROI: Time, Money And Vibe Coding
For years, the industry has asked, “How do we make money with AI?” The answers, panelists said, are finally becoming concrete, splitting into two distinct camps: massive efficiency gains and direct revenue generation.
For Oslund, the immediate win is reclaiming lost time. He described a shift toward building quick software demos using vibe coding, a low-code/no-code solution where non-technical staff can prototype solutions.
“This is the revenge of the English major,” Oslund said, noting that if you can articulate a logic flow in natural language, you can now build a tool. Scripps has moved beyond simple chatbots to deploying over 300 “agents” that handle complex tasks. Oslund described “agent swarms” where multiple AI agents pass tasks to one another, compiling weekly reports, summarizing deltas and building executive dashboards without human intervention until the final review.
“We eliminated all third-party voice actors and now use synthetic voice with our own talent,” Oslund revealed, highlighting a direct “tick-a-box” cost saving that requires zero complex calculus to justify to the CFO.
AI Monetization At The Edge
While Scripps focuses on operational efficiencies, Stringr’s Stewart is demonstrating that AI can also be a direct revenue engine. She shared data on a partner using Stringr’s VidGen tool, which automates video creation from text and data sources.
“We have one partner who started creating a dozen videos a day. Now they’re creating about 150,” Stewart said. The result? That partner is generating “approximately $20 in new revenue per video per day on MSN alone,” separately they are scaling to generate over $22,000 in monthly incremental revenue from a single AI workflow on Facebook. By automating the creation of weather, finance and even pet adoption videos from Stringr’s VideGen product, newsrooms are unlocking new video reveneue inventory from their text content.
The Cultural Shift: It’s Not About Age
One of the most counterintuitive insights came from Gray’s Neves regarding who is actually adopting these tools. The assumption that younger digital natives would lead the charge turned out to be false.
“Our biggest skeptics were people probably just about three to 10 years in their career,” Neves observed. In contrast, “the most seasoned journalists jumped right in and started demanding new apps.”
She said these veterans recognized AI as a tool to eliminate drudgery, like reversioning human generated news content, like broadcast scripts, into web articles and social media posts, allowing them to focus on actual reporting. Gray Media’s “Ask Grai” platform, available to all of its 10,000 employees, includes tools like “Producer Buddy” and “News Coach,” which grades scripts and offers structural feedback. It’s not replacing the journalist; it’s acting as a 24/7 assistant editor and helping accelerate news tasks across Gray’s newsrooms.
The “Human-In-The-Loop” Non-Negotiable
Despite the enthusiasm, the guardrails remain strict. When asked about the red lines for automation, the panel was unified.
“I will die on that mountain,” Neves said regarding the necessity of a human-in-the-loop. “Don’t tell me that AI told you, do you know that independently?”
Reuters’ Leff echoed this sentiment but with a nuance fitting a global news agency serving financial markets. While Reuters has used automation for decades, the introduction of generative AI requires a new layer of governance.
“Anything released through the newsroom goes through a new AI governance committee,” Leff said. The goal is to ensure that while AI can reduce video packaging time from four minutes to under one minute, the journalist remains “totally conscious and in control of that content.”
AI As The Ultimate Force Multiplier
A clear takeaway was we are moving away from AI as a novelty and toward AI as a utility. Whether it is Reuters reallocating resources from packaging to reporting, Stringr creating new AI revenue opportunities, Gray Media using AI to increase human efficiency in newsrooms or Scripps building agent swarms to handle bureaucracy, the winners will be those who view AI not as a content creator, but as the ultimate force multiplier for human intelligence.
Disclosure: Gray Media is a client of the media technology and AI strategy firm, Ordo Digital.
About Jon Accarrino