AImpactful #21 AI in Journalism as a Co Pilot

Pete Pachal has a way of cutting through the noise. Like when he compares banning AI in newsrooms to the early days of smartphones:

“Everyone said you need two phones, a BlackBerry for work, an iPhone for personal use. Surprise, surprise. Two or three years later, everyone’s got an iPhone and all their work stuff’s on it.”

His point? You can’t ban the future. People will bring AI in anyway.

Pete also watched the early AI disasters unfold, with newsrooms churning out what he calls “pink slime” or “AI slop” while trying to replace human writers with generative content at scale. He understands why journalists became one of the most skeptical professions when it comes to AI.

Pete is a journalist and AI strategist. Through his platform, The Media Co-Pilot, he helps newsrooms, PR teams, and creative professionals with practical advice and clear thinking.

His framework is elegant. Think of AI as belonging at the two ends of the journalistic process. At the beginning, research, idea generation, and refining your angle. At the end, repackaging your finished story for social media, newsletters, and different audiences. The middle, where the actual writing happens, stays yours.

“What AI does with a finished, human-written story, the sky’s the limit,” Pete explains.

To help prepare this episode’s introduction and transcript, we used Claude, an AI tool developed by Anthropic, under careful human supervision. Everything was fact-checked and polished by our team before publication. Transparency is important to us.

What we explore:
• The “two ends” strategy and where AI actually helps in the journalistic process
• Why banning AI tools is like trying to ban iPhones and what to do instead
• Using chatbots to learn what your audience really wants
• The niche revolution and why fewer eyeballs might mean a better business
• What most journalists get wrong when they try AI for the first time

Episode details:
• Duration: 17 minutes
• Guest: Pete Pachal, founder of The Media Co-Pilot
• Host: Branislava Lovre
• Format: Video podcast with full transcript

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