Can Journalism Schools Teach AI Without Losing the Craft?

Thank you for reaching out! This workshop is currently planned as an in-person event at our Baltimore office. Since we’re testing a new workshop format, our primary focus is on the in-person experience. That said, we’re exploring options to accommodate virtual attendees as well. We should have a better idea of what’s possible by next week and will be sure to keep you updated. Thanks again for your interest, and we’ll be in touch soon.

Host Jason Michael Perry sits down with Derek Willis, a lecturer at the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism and affiliate professor at AIM — Maryland’s Artificial Intelligence Interdisciplinary Institute — to explore what happens when the newsroom’s most powerful new tool is also its most dangerous.

In this episode, they dig into how journalism schools are preparing the next generation of reporters for a world where AI can draft articles, fabricate quotes, and produce content at a speed no human can match. Derek draws on years inside The New York Times, ProPublica, and The Washington Post to talk about where AI actually helps journalists, why his “Team Luddite” classroom experiment keeps proving human skill still matters, and how educators teach craft during a technological transition where nobody knows the end state.

Podcast Notes & Links:

• An AI Upheaval Is Coming for Media. This Journalist Is Already All In — Wall Street Journal
• Union Denounces AI-Generated News Stories as Baltimore Sun Management Predicts More of Them — Baltimore Brew
• AP’s Approach to Artificial Intelligence
• Principles for Using Generative AI in the Times’s Newsroom — New York Times
• The Baltimore Banner’s Approach to AI
• Ars Technica Editor’s Note: Retraction of Article Containing Fabricated Quotations
• Ars Technica Fires Senior AI Reporter After AI-Generated Quotes Scandal — Futurism
• An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me — Scott Shambaugh

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Credits

Thanks to the team at WYPR, our producers Sam Bermas-Dawes and Shania Mapson, and Myrna Martinez, Head of Operations and Marketing at PerryLabs.