Paper ID: 2409.12000

"It Might be Technically Impressive, But It's Practically Useless to Us": Practices, Challenges, and Opportunities for Cross-Functional Collaboration around AI within the News Industry

Qing Xiao, Xianzhe Fan, Felix M. Simon, Bingbing Zhang, Motahhare Eslami

Recently, an increasing number of news organizations have integrated artificial intelligence (AI) into their workflows, leading to a further influx of AI technologists and data workers into the news industry. This has initiated cross-functional collaborations between these professionals and journalists. While prior research has explored the impact of AI-related roles entering the news industry, there is a lack of studies on how cross-functional collaboration unfolds between AI professionals and journalists. Through interviews with 17 journalists, 6 AI technologists, and 3 AI workers with cross-functional experience from leading news organizations, we investigate the current practices, challenges, and opportunities for cross-functional collaboration around AI in today's news industry. We first study how journalists and AI professionals perceive existing cross-collaboration strategies. We further explore the challenges of cross-functional collaboration and provide recommendations for enhancing future cross-functional collaboration around AI in the news industry.

Submitted: Sep 18, 2024