Award-winning journalists encourage students to embrace AI in the future of journalism โ The Berkeley Beacon
A panel of journalists discuss the newsroom utility of artificial intelligence in Bill Bordy Theater on Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2025. (Courtesy / Lu Ann Reeb)
Award-winning journalists encourage students to embrace AI in the future of journalism
By Jules Telfort, Staff Copyeditor / November 24, 2025
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A panel of journalists discuss the newsroom utility of artificial intelligence in Bill Bordy Theater on Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2025. (Courtesy / Lu Ann Reeb)
On Wednesday evening in the Bill Bordy Theater, four award-winning journalists spoke with enthusiasm about a subject that many students at Emerson College are vehemently against: the use of AI.
As the panelists, half of whom appeared in person and half through Zoom, and senior journalism major and moderator Anastasia Petridis began the discussion, around 35 faculty and students filed into the room. Some were chattering curiously about what the evening would entail, and others were skeptical that their opinion on AI could be changed at all.
โI have a lot of hesitation to use AI just because I feel like in the past I didnโt need it, so why should I need it now?โ said senior journalism major M.J. Membreรฑo.
Lisa Pierpont, a professor of broadcast journalism at Emerson and a Boston Magazine columnist, opened the lecture by emphasizing that AI in journalism is not a conversation about a hypothetical future, but something that is already being used in newsrooms. She noted that many in broadcast, including journalists at CBS News Boston, use AI to transcribe audio, and WCVB Channel 5 uses a tool called LegalLense to summarize legal documents.
โI can go down the whole list, but everybody [is] using [AI] in different ways,โ Pierpont said, discussing how AI can help journalists streamline tedious processes.
For Upasna Gautam, a partner in strategy and innovation at The Texas Tribune who appeared as a panelist on Zoom, the question isnโt how AI should or shouldnโt be used. Instead, it is how it can solve problems and increase workforce productivity through a product mindset, where AI delivers value in helping solve customer problems.
โThat product mindset trains you not just to build things with AI, but rather to build the right things that solve the most critical problems for the right reasons, with minimal risk and unintended harm,โ she explained.
Although Gautam said that AI is not the answer to every problem, she believes AI in newsrooms is an aid rather than a hindrance, and having a product-led mindset adds value to newsroomsโ audience, purpose, and business goals.
See Also: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/communication/articles/10.3389/fcomm.2025.1537146/full
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