Within the last two decades, journalism has experienced a technological revolution that has led to high economic disruption with declining advertising revenues, shrinking subscription numbers, and austerity measures. This shift is concerning particularly to regional or local journalism, as local news media organizations are at increased risk of being at the disadvantaged end of the technological knowledge and adoption gap. Regional/local journalism is essential to the public sphere as the audience’s interests or concerns often focus on what is happening in their local communities and not solely on global or national issues. By initiating and facilitating conversations primarily covering events of regional relevance, local journalism is (still) forming the backbone of democratic deliberation and public oversight. Even global or national news stories are interpreted and contextualized by local news media, providing local angles and insights relevant to their audiences.

The transformative potential of Artificial Intelligence, as the most recent of these digital technologies, has triggered strategic responses from media organizations. While it might benefit media organizations to adopt these new technologies to remain relevant in the competitive media market, there is still plenty of untapped potential for regional/local journalism to seize the technological innovation’s manifold possibilities. On the other hand, with a lack of comprehensive organizational strategy towards the adoption of AI, integration of AI technologies in regional/local newsrooms are at times experimental without sufficient reflection on the ethical and legal complexities.

Given this context, this session will facilitate a discussion on these prospects through the panel participants offering different perspectives. We intend to provide a collective platform for the thoughts of academic experts in journalism, AI and journalists from regional news media organizations in the Netherlands.