Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming newsrooms, reshaping how journalists gather information, craft narratives and distribute content across multiple platforms. At TVNewsCheck‘s NewsTECHForum, a panel of technology leaders was convened to explore AI’s implications for the future of news production.
The panel was moderated by this columnist and featured Mike Kralec, SVP and CTO of Sinclair; Tony Plosz, VP and CTO of Graham Media Group; and Paul Cramer, managing director of media and broadcast at Veritone. The experts shared insights on AI’s current applications in newsrooms and its potential to revolutionize the industry, while also addressing the challenges and ethical considerations that accompany this technological shift.
Unlocking The Power Of Metadata
A key focus of the discussion was the critical role of metadata in leveraging AI for news operations. Sinclair’s Kralec emphasized the importance of metadata independence, crediting a strategy from Sinclair’s AVP or Media Management, Mike Palmer. “The more standards-based, the more we can separate, we can have metadata independence,” Kralec said. “The more we can have metadata independence from the media itself, the better we’re going to be prepared for any future use cases, especially in the AI space.”
Graham’s Plosz shared cost-saving insights on its approach to AI adoption, particularly for metadata generation of archive content. Instead of immediately implementing expensive AI models capable of facial recognition and object identification, the company initially focused on cheaper speech-to-text processing. This strategic decision not only saved money but also allowed Graham to benefit from future advancements in AI technology.
Plosz highlighted the financial challenges broadcasters face in keeping up with AI. “We’ve kind of held out,” he explained, suggesting that sometimes it’s better to not be an early adopter. This patience has worked to the company’s financial benefit: “Now everything is on sale, it’s discounted, and the technology’s only getting better,” he said. By waiting, Graham positioned itself to implement more advanced, cost-effective AI solutions for metadata generation and other applications.
AI-Powered Storytelling And Distribution
The panelists also explored how AI is enhancing storytelling capabilities in newsrooms. Sinclair showcased its innovative real-time language translation technology, demonstrating a live translation of a weather forecast from English to Spanish. Kralec explained the broader vision behind this technology: “I think it’s more setting a tone for how we expect to use AI inside of our newsroom,” Kralec said. “Making content more accessible is a really important thing for our group.”
Image via Sinclair
During the panel, Plosz unveiled Graham’s internal AI platform called Spark, designed to provide a unified interface for various internal AI tools. He described the platform’s purpose: “Really the idea behind it is to give a single pane of glass to reporters … and kind of mask what’s going on behind the scenes,” Plosz said. “Putting Spark out in front, it’s essentially a front end for technology behind which we can then swap out, or utilize best of breed.”
Veritone’s Cramer highlighted how AI is being used to enhance visual storytelling and monetize archive content. “We really see a lot of clients using it to enhance visual storytelling. So, we’re really now starting to work with clients where instead of actually going back and looking for a very specific query to find something in the archive, the AI can actually look at the story and recommend clips so they can build a sequence faster and find B-roll faster,” Cramer said.
The Future Of AI In News
Looking ahead, the panelists shared their visions for AI’s impact on local broadcast groups over the next five years. Cramer predicted a shift toward personalized video content: “I think the next iteration of that is going to be dynamically generated personalized video content. … If I can go through the brand’s app or to the website and say, ‘hey, tell me about something that happened in this market at this time’ and it goes and looks at the archive and literally puts together the script, the story, the synthetic voice and the video to go with it and serves an add-in to it, I think that’s going to be a direct-to-consumer experience we’re going to see pretty soon.”
Kralec agreed, emphasizing the need to maintain local relevance: “All these pieces that we’ve talked about today have really been about saying we know that content will need to be relevant.”
As news organizations continue to integrate AI into their operations, the panelists stressed the importance of training newsroom staff to effectively leverage these new tools. Kralec suggested: “I feel like we need to train our newsrooms to be AI prompt engineers. … Understand how to interact with the AI systems in order to really understand how they can leverage them.”
