By Alasdair McKie, Director of Project Management and Katherine Ruane, Director of Strategic Marketing
October 15th, 2024
The intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and journalism has sparked both excitement and curiosity within the media industry. As AI becomes more integrated into the newsroom, the opportunities for enhancing efficiency and creating new value for audiences have grown exponentially.
In a recent discussion at an event hosted by BDZV, Alasdair McKie, director of project management at Mather Economics, and a key player in the adoption of AI technology during his tenure at The Globe and Mail, shared insights into the ways AI is reshaping newsrooms.
In this article, we’ll explore key takeaways, highlighting how AI is transforming journalism by revolutionizing content curation, dynamic paywalls and data-driven strategies in today’s newsrooms. To fully appreciate AI’s impact, we can look at one of the early pioneers in this space: The Globe and Mail.
The genesis of AI at The Globe and Mail
Around 2015, The Globe and Mail, Canada’s largest national newspaper, launched a data science team named “Sophi” to develop AI-driven solutions aimed at solving newsroom challenges. The initiative began with a simple goal: to help journalists and editors better understand the value of the content they were producing. Initially, the focus was on digital publishing, where the emphasis was largely on clicks and page views. However, the Sophi team recognized that while clicks measured engagement, they did not necessarily reflect the value of the content in terms of user loyalty, subscriptions or return on investment.
To address this, the team developed what was initially known as the “Globe Score,” later renamed the “Sophi Score,” which measured the value of content by analyzing user behavior. The tool helped The Globe and Mail identify areas where they were either underserving or overserving their audience. By understanding what types of content readers valued most — expressed through user registrations, subscription payments or engagement — the newsroom was able to optimize its editorial strategy and allocate resources more efficiently.
Optimizing curation decisions
One of the key challenges faced by newsrooms is content curation — deciding which stories to promote, especially on high-visibility platforms like the homepage. Traditionally, these decisions have been driven by human judgment, with editors determining which stories hold the most news value. While this is an essential function of journalism, it’s often only applied to the top articles on the homepage. Further down the homepage or on other landing pages, content is often organized in reverse-chronological order or by strict adherence to topic sections, such as sports or business.
AI provides a unique opportunity to scale this curation process beyond the top stories with tools able to automate content curation across multiple pages, organizing articles based on real-time data and audience behavior. Importantly, this automation doesn’t mean removing human judgment entirely. Editors should still make critical decisions about the most important stories, but AI can supplement these efforts by managing the vast amount of content that goes beyond the editorial team’s capacity. At The Globe and Mail, they found that AI-driven curation optimized outcomes for audience engagement and drove greater team efficiency. The New York Times has adopted a similar strategy, recently sharing insights on how AI is helping them enhance content curation and streamline newsroom operations.
Making paywall decisions more intelligent
AI also empowers newsrooms by bringing greater intelligence to Dynamic Paywalls. As digital subscriptions have become critical to sustaining journalism, paywall strategies have evolved from rigid, rules-based systems to more adaptive, AI-driven models. Traditionally, content access decisions were static — some sections were always behind a paywall, while others remained open. In contrast, AI-powered paywalls continuously analyze content performance and user behavior, making real-time, nuanced decisions about which articles to restrict based on content value and audience intent.
This approach, as seen with The Globe and Mail, aligns paywall strategy with editorial priorities while freeing up newsrooms to focus on high-quality journalism, as the system optimizes access and revenue in the background. For a more recent example, Business Insider reported a 75% increase in conversions after adopting an AI-powered paywall, demonstrating the transformative impact AI can have on maximizing revenue through the paywall.
Analyzing large data sets and content diversity
In addition to driving revenue, AI empowers newsrooms to analyze large-scale data sets, offering new ways to discover stories and improve content diversity. For example, an article from The Reuters Institute highlights how investigative journalists can leverage AI to enhance their watchdog journalism. Beyond story identification, AI is helping newsrooms track and promote diversity. Traditionally, editorial teams would manually audit their publications once a year to assess diversity in sourcing, such as how many women were quoted or how many people of color appeared in photos.
Today, publishers like Aftonbladet are using AI to continuously analyze their own publication’s diversity and representation, providing robust insights that drive more inclusive content and support the journalistic mission.
Generative AI: New frontiers for newsrooms
As AI continues to evolve, newsrooms are tapping into even more advanced capabilities, including generative AI, which opens new frontiers for automating routine reporting tasks and personalizing content for key segments of readers. For example, in Toronto, the city government publishes open data on a variety of topics, such as emergency responses or restaurant inspections. The Toronto Star uses AI to transform this raw data into readable articles tailored to specific neighborhoods, making the information more relevant to readers. This type of automation allows journalists to focus on more complex reporting tasks, while AI handles the routine generation of data-driven stories.
AI is a tool for empowering the journalistic mission
As AI continues to evolve, its role in the newsroom will likely expand even further. From content curation and paywalls to diversity tracking and data analysis, AI is helping newsrooms operate more efficiently and make more informed editorial decisions. Rather than replacing journalists, AI is enabling them to focus on the tasks that add the most value, such as investigative reporting and high-quality analysis. By integrating AI into everyday workflows, newsrooms can unlock new opportunities for revenue growth and audience engagement, ensuring their continued relevance in an increasingly digital world. As Alasdair McKie explains,
“The key to successfully implementing AI in the newsroom is focusing on ‘the jobs to be done.’ By automating routine tasks and equipping journalists with data-driven insights, AI is helping newsrooms do more with less and better serve their readers.”
Discover how Sophi’s advanced tools are transforming revenue growth and operational efficiency
For a personalized overview or to learn more, feel free to connect directly with Alasdair McKie (aMcKie@mathereconomics.com) and Ariel Burkett (aburkett@mathereconomics).
Read More Insights
