Newsroom of the Future

Candyce Kelshall argues that the newsroom of the future requires new skills, and the ability to work with fast emerging new technologies.  Leaders will need to be committed to investing in training and upskilling staff.

Newsroom Structure

There should be three units staffed with upskilled teams that exist in a newsroom ecosystem:

Receival hub 

This is a unit within the newsroom responsible for verifying the raw material which is being processed for the news cycle. Images, sound bites, b-roll all get a verification listing based on their metadata. It is the point of entry into the news room and the starting point for information integrity assurance. This process uses a ‘chain of continuity’ concept so that images and voice clips cannot be manipulated once assessed as authentic.  The meta data for each item entering the chain of continuity can be logged,  creating an audit trail for stories which go to air. Only the origin and verification of its authenticity is assessed at the point of entry into the chain of continuity. This desk logs metadata for received content, including location, time, date, and fingerprint for sound bites, film clips, voice-overs, background audio, interviews. 

Fusion Desk or OSINT Hub

The fusion team is tasked with sorting, collating, processing, classifying, filtering, and structuring incoming content, after their meta data has been logged.They can also identify file types and problematic data that needs further assessment. The team scans content for infringements and compares it to the existing corpus. 

The team also scans available information from all sources in order to  provide rich and detailed context for analysis and story generation and development. Stories are broken down and  the hub conducts all source and open source searches around the key components to stories. 

Additional material sources by the fusion hub must be sent to the receival hub for tagging and to be logged.The main role of this unit is to provide as many points of reference as possible to stories in order to discern perspectives  presented or implied. It will be the first stage in determining if mal-information has been missed due to sophisticated disinformation  efforts. 

Advanced Analysis Unit:

This team authenticates content and identifies anomalies. It grades information based on reliability and veracity. Assesses source credibility and scores finished stories prior to airing to ensure that the highest standards have been met via the use of assessment methodology employed by the information integrity unit. The unit:

• Generates entity relation models to create an integrity score for all stories. 
• Validates identities through voice detection, corroboration, facial recognition. 
• Analyzes content for misinformation, sentiment, emotive elements, and narrative reasoning.
• Investigates disinformation by examining provenance and temporal irregularities.
• Combats malignant information operations by assessing legends, digital footprints, and digital ghosts.

Snapshot of a news intelligence cycle 

It’s important to develop a robust Chain of Custody in the newsroom of the future.  This means securing the movement of all pieces of content generated from production to dissemination. There needs to be systems around the following areas in order to ensure uncontaminated information from one stage to the next. 

•   Sourcing Reliability Grading
•   Information Integrity Grading
•   Meta Data Tagging
•   Content Authentication
•   Content Appreciation
•   AI Assistance
•   Editorial Assessment
•   Containerization for Chain of Custody Trail
•   ORCID ID for reporters and stories
•   Hashes for reporters and stories

All of this requires news leaders and teams to be thinking about robust authentication frameworks that can keep pace with AI algorithms. There must be awareness of data-specific problems for newsrooms that include data poisoning, biased datasets, blindness to datasets not used, AI nationalism, data degradation, synthetic data, misinformation, disinformation, and identity validity.   

Information integrity units made up by the three desk units outlined above will ensure that news can be trusted because it is assessed, not reported, and because there is an audit trail for each component of a story that has been assessed as valid. When news media assess information before sharing and include assessment methodology ratings for their stories we know that we can trust the media house and question entities that do not publish their assessment ratings.

— Candyce Kelshall

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