This episode of Newsroom Robots is supported by The Lenfest Institute for Journalism.
At the Seattle Times, an AI tool identified a new prospect and helped close additional ad revenue in a single day.
The Seattle Times is one of 11 news organizations participating in the Lenfest AI Collaborative and Fellowship Program, funded by OpenAI and Microsoft. Through this initiative, AI engineering fellow Rajesh Barade worked with the advertising team to address their challenges and developed a prospecting agent. This tool enables sales representatives to enter a category or focus area, identify businesses spending in that market, find decision-makers, access advertising spend data, and generate personalized outreach.
The Seattle Times deliberately began its AI efforts in advertising rather than the newsroom. Early successes helped build momentum across the organization. This led to listening tours across finance, HR, the audience, and eventually the newsroom, where a municipal meeting listening tool is now in development.
This week on Newsroom Robots, I speak with Kati Erwert, Senior VP of Product Marketing and Public Service at The Seattle Times, and Tristan Loper, Head of National Programs at the Lenfest Institute, to explore how the prospecting agent works, why starting in advertising was key to unlocking organization wide adoption, and what it takes to turn early AI successes into lasting capability.
In this episode, we cover:
02:07 — How The Seattle Times built internal momentum for AI adoption
05:51 — What the Lenfest AI Collaborative is and how it works
09:29 — Inside the prospecting agent: how a sales rep closed business in one day
14:11 — Why starting with advertising drove cultural change across the organization
17:07 — The buy vs. build decision in a fast-moving AI landscape
19:03 — How open-source code sharing works across the 11-newsroom cohort
24:44 — Building the municipal meeting listening tool and beyond
37:07 — Navigating the tension of blocking AI bots
45:47 — How smaller newsrooms can get started with AI today
🎧 Listen to the full conversation with Kati Erwert and Tristan Loper on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your preferred podcast platform.
P.S. I’ll be in Berlin, Germany, and Vienna, Austria, later this month—reply if you’d like to meet up. But first, I’m headed to the International Journalism Festival in Perugia, Italy, next week. A few things I’m looking forward to:
If AI is the new intern, what’s the new on-ramp into journalism? — I’m moderating this panel with Astrid Maier (dpa) and past podcast guests Jeremy Caplan (City University of New York) and Djordje Padejski (Stanford University). Friday April 17 at 10:30am.
dpa AI Soirée – Bring Your Own AI Problems! — Join me and Astrid Maier from dpa, Germany’s leading news agency, for an evening of real-world AI problem-solving. Bring your messiest challenges, and we’ll talk through them together. Spots are limited, so register now to secure yours. Friday, April 17 at 6:30 PM.
Steal this: AI projects newsrooms actually shipped and how they got it over the line — Loved this conversation? See it live. Kati and Tristan will be joined by Emily Brown (Microsoft) and Kevin Hoffmann (The Philadelphia Inquirer). Saturday, April 18 at 9:30 AM.
