The HS Beat: How student newspapers can harness AI in the newsroom

In the age of artificial intelligence, every student publication has a different approach to how they use AI in the newsroom.

Although journalism ethics frown upon using large language models as a crutch to generate entire blocks of text, AI can enhance workflow when used as a tool.

Publications should set their boundaries on how much AI they are willing to permit based on editorial decisions and alignment with relevant school policies.

The Jets Flyover encourages the use of large language models to help with outlining and editing, but strictly prohibits fully AI-written articles. We also avoid AI-generated images and instead have illustrators draw illustrations.

AI can assist in the brainstorming process by helping writers organize their ideas.

This is especially helpful for feature or opinion pieces, which often lack the clear structure of traditional news articles.

For example, a writer might list all the angles they want to explore, create an outline, and ask AI to help refine it. Writers can also use AI to determine if certain ideas are irrelevant to the story's main theme.

Our staff writers, for example, use AI instead of a thesaurus by asking, “What are some different phrases for ‘face off against?’”

For a Korea-based staff where many writers speak English as their second language, AI helps by suggesting words that fit the context of the sentence or paragraph.

AI emulates the experience of a peer editor. It can identify flaws in content, structure and style when trained properly.

For content and structure, writers can instruct the model to read from the perspective of their audience (e.g. a high school student) and ask if it has any questions.

Although this method sometimes gives too much information that diverges from the throughline of the story, it allows a writer to identify areas that need more explanations.

Stylistically, we encourage writers to limit the use of to-be verbs and gerunds. Searching for these instances manually using Command + F (or Ctrl + F) becomes burdensome. AI models streamline this process by highlighting weak language and suggesting alternatives.

This degree of AI usage necessitates specific guidelines on what is and isn’t acceptable. Publications should make it clear that although students may use AI as a tool, they cannot use it as a crutch. For example, they should not ask AI to write an entire article.

Alternatively, publications can also set restrictions — the American School in London has a strict no-AI policy in the newsroom, besides assisting with transcribing interviews, generating story ideas and checking grammar.

However, in the age of personally trained language models and AI humanizers, the feasibility of restricting AI usage remains an issue educators worldwide have yet to navigate.

While AI enhances workflow efficiency and acts as a peer editor for many less experienced writers, publications must be mindful of the thin line between assistance and plagiarism.

But when harnessed well, large language models can prove revolutionary for both writers and editors.

Interested in finding student journalism prompts you can copy and paste into AI models? Read High School Press Central’s post on AI usage in the newsroom here.

📧 Contact Leanne Yoon at hspresscentral@gmail.com. For more information, please refer to hspresscentral.com.