Welcome to the forefront of conversational AI as we explore the fascinating world of AI chatbots in our dedicated blog series. Discover the latest advancements, applications, and strategies that propel the evolution of chatbot technology. From enhancing customer interactions to streamlining business processes, these articles delve into the innovative ways artificial intelligence is shaping the landscape of automated conversational agents. Whether you’re a business owner, developer, or simply intrigued by the future of interactive technology, join us on this journey to unravel the transformative power and endless possibilities of AI chatbots.
|By Sarah Vassello '17
At the Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media, one question drives much of our work: what makes local journalism work — and how can we help it work better? The answers change over time, but the mission stays the same: connect journalists, audiences and organizations in ways that sustain both civic life and local news itself.
Lately, that means looking closely at audience demand. Local news has a demand problem, with audiences seeking information in a different way than is often provided. Like any business venture, an organization needs to meet its consumers where they are.
We wondered: How can AI influence demand? Are news consumers looking for a way to engage more interactively? Additionally, are AI-powered chatbots an easy way to tackle persistent problems faced within newsrooms?
We believe in research grounded in real-world practices and newsroom realities. That’s why we launched the Local NewsBot Studio, a hands-on pilot program in which we partner with newsrooms to design and build custom chatbots. Our goal is not just to create working tools, but to study how audiences use them and how newsrooms can adapt AI to meet local needs.
The Local NewsBot Studio brings together research, product development and newsroom collaboration. Over several months, our team at CISLM has worked side-by-side with four news organizations across the Southeast — spanning community radio, digital-only sites and a legacy print newspaper — to co-develop chatbots tailored to their unique audiences.
Each chatbot is built on the newsroom’s own reporting and resources, not general web scraping or open-ended AI. That means every bot is trained on trusted, curated information specific to its community, using only the information provided by the news organization.
Here’s what that looks like in practice:
Local News Researcher Yanan Sun and I built these bots from start to finish — mapping audience needs to technical design, facilitating content curation for knowledge bases, and supporting newsroom staff on how to embed and maintain their bots.
This combination of hands-on support and research insight is what makes the Studio different. It’s not experimentation for tech’s sake, but a deliberate experiment in service of journalism.
We’re building on what we learned from our own AI-powered chatbot, the Local News Audience Assistant, with a unique team with backgrounds in product and research that makes this possible:
Our team saw chatbots as the best way to experiment because they meet several pressing needs for local newsrooms:
But our work isn’t only about proving chatbots “work.” We’re equally invested in understanding how audiences engage with them, what kinds of trust barriers might emerge, and what local journalists can learn from the data.
AI comes with well-documented risks. At CISLM, we’re committed to building and testing these tools responsibly, always with trust and transparency in mind.
That’s why we designed the Studio around three principles:
By keeping the scope human-led and newsroom- specific, we’re ensuring these tools feel like extensions of local journalism rather than replacements for it.
The Local NewsBot Studio wasn’t about proving whether AI could “solve” local news. It was about testing, in real newsroom contexts, where chatbots add value and where they fall short. In 45 days across four bots, we saw both promise and clear limits.
We found that the long-term viability of newsroom chatbots will depend less on whether they “work” in the abstract and more on the strategy behind them: clearly defined use cases, auto-updating content pipelines, transparency about limitations and systems for gathering structured user feedback.
The takeaway? Chatbots can be affordable, practical tools for local news — but only when built with a focused scope, clear strategy and sustainable plan for maintenance.
