A landmark study of AI in newsrooms reveals they need to be coaxed to experiment with their business models

Link: The News + AI Field Report, by Djordje Padejski for the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass CommunicationThe News + AI Field Report for 2022-2025, produced by Djordje Padejski in conjunction with ASU’s Knight Center for the Future of News, is a landmark analysis of how newsrooms are experimenting with AI. The interactive app is also a really useful way to explore the 160 projects covered by this research.I’ve been mulling over one of the findings described in the summary:“Newsrooms are most worried about the business threat from AI and have built the least for it. Interviews reveal widespread anxiety about the effects of AI on site traffic, audience behavior and news business models. Yet relatively few projects focus on revenue, subscriptions or fundraising.”20% of projects were business-related, but every fundraising project and over half of the business projects were grantees in the American Journalism Project’s AI programs. If those newsrooms are stripped out, the…