AI Strategy Development for Newsroom Leaders

AI Strategy Development for Newsroom Leaders

Overview

Artificial intelligence offers much for public service media newsrooms but it also brings significant challenges. It can drive efficiencies, freeing up journalists to do more journalism, assist in research and help them tell stories in creative new ways. It can broaden the public’s access to journalism through simple processes like automated translation and transcription and more complex tasks like generating new formats. But there are concerns about bias, about hallucinations and there’s what the audience thinks – is it ready for Gen AI news content? Public service media news is built on a reputation of trust, how can this be preserved in an era of AI while newsrooms seize its opportunities to deliver on their mission?

This new course from the EBU Academy School of AI attempts to help newsroom leaders in answering this important question and develop a robust and thoughtful AI strategy. Led by Alexandra Borchardt, the lead author of the EBU News Report 2025, ‘Trusted Journalism in the Age of Generative AI‘, our classes draw on her extensive research into the topic and her considerable experience as a newsroom leader and change management coach.  

Who’s it for: 

  • AI leaders  
  • Newsroom leaders 
  • Strategists 

What you’ll learn: 

  • What’s working now for public service media newsrooms using AI  
  • Who is your audience and how could it profit from AI supported journalism 
  • What is missing in your offerings to the public, and could AI help  
  • How could AI make newsroom work more efficient to shift resources  
  • How you drive change towards the AI supported newsroom 
  • Which are the ethical questions involved 

Course structure: 

  • Day 1: Audiences-focused strategy: What do you want to achieve?   
  • Day 2: Driving change: How do you best achieve it? 
  • Day 3: Ethics debates: What do you need to be aware of?

Relevant Reports:

News Report 2024: Trusted Journalism in the Age of Generative AI | EBU

News Report 2023: Climate journalism that works | EBU

Meet your faculty

Prof. Alexandra Borchardt, PhD

Senior Journalist, Advisor, Researcher, University Teacher

Alexandra Borchardt is a senior journalist, researcher, university teacher, and independent advisor with more than 25 years of newsroom experience, 15 of these in leadership roles. In the past five years she has supported 26 European publishers in digital transformation as a coach for the World Association of News Publishers’ (WAN-IFRA) Table Stakes Europe Programme. Alexandra teaches leadership and strategy as a honorary Professor for Leadership and Digital Transformation at TU Munich’s TUM School of Managementis and is affiliated with the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford as a Senior Research Associate after having served as their Director of Leadership Programmes until 2019. Prior to this she was managing editor of Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), Germany’s leading quality daily. She is the lead author of the three most recent EBU News Reports, the latest ones being “Trusted Journalism in the Age of Generative AI”(2024) and “Climate Journalism That Works: Between Knowledge and Impact” (2023).

Alexandra is a member of the Committee for Editorial Independence at Czech publisher Economia, a board member of the Constructive Foundation in Aarhus, a member of the advisory boards of Wiener Zeitung and Klimafakten, and engaged in the evaluation of media start-ups in different juries. At the Council of Europe Alexandra served as a rapporteur on the Committee of Experts on Freedom of Expression and Digital Technologies until September 2021 and prior to that as vice chair on the Committee of Experts on Quality Journalism in the Digital Age.

You can look at some of Alexandra’s work at www.alexandraborchardt.com, and connect with her on X (Twitter) at @AlexaBorchardt, Bluesky at @alexandraborchardt.bsky.social, or LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/alexandraborchardt

Profile photo by: Jacobia Dahm