Newswell

Newswell

AI-assisted newspaper automation with the philosophy: only replace the chores

Overview

Newswell is a project exploring how AI can assist local journalism without replacing journalists. The core philosophy is that automation should handle the tedious, repetitive work—freeing journalists to do what humans do best: investigate, interview, tell stories.

Presented at the ASU journalism/AI conference (Lenfest gathering) in January 2026 as a 5-minute Ignite talk.

Philosophy: Only Replace the Chores

The guiding principle distinguishes between:

Chores (automate these):

• Reformatting press releases
• Generating routine meeting summaries
• Scheduling social media posts
• Transcription
• Data entry and formatting
• Repetitive layout tasks

Journalism (humans do this):

• Source development and interviews
• Investigative work
• Story selection and framing
• Community relationships
• Editorial judgment
• Accountability reporting

The goal is not to produce AI-written articles, but to eliminate the administrative burden that keeps journalists from doing journalism.

Relation to Broader Work

This connects to:

• Data Journalism — Using data to tell stories
• Journalism — Investigation methods and practices
• FOIA — Public records as source material
• CLI Tools — Building tools that serve specific workflows

See Also

• Journalism
• Data Journalism
• OSINT Monitoring