Artificial Intelligence (AI) and rule-based automation technologies offer opportunities for local journalism to cope better with its economic challenges (Jenkins & Nielsen, 2020). At the same time, such digital technologies should be responsible (Bastian et al., 2021), i.e., not only increase economic efficiency but also contribute to the democratic role of local news media in society by adhering to journalistic quality standards.
However, research regarding journalists’ perceptions of how AI in local news media should incorporate such quality standards remains scarce. Therefore, based on the Stanford Design Thinking approach (Micheli et al., 2019), an online survey followed by four in-person mixed-methods workshops with 15 students from the German School of Journalism was conducted. The aim of the Design Thinking project was to investigate their attitudes regarding responsible AI in local journalism and to develop a prototype of a responsible AI application. The analytical framework draws on literature regarding the contemporary challenges journalists face and their perspectives regarding quality standards.
The students considered time constraints regarding editing and assembling video content as a core problem in local journalism, with content overload and lack of time for fact-checking identified as core reasons for this problem. Accordingly, AI was perceived to have particular potential to assist with editing and assembling video content. Relevance and accuracy were described as core quality standards that need to be implemented in a corresponding AI application. Based on the problem and standard identification, a low-fidelity prototype for a responsible AI application for editing and assembling video content was ideated and tested. The prototype's functionality included automated video and audio retrieval, sentiment analysis, and fact-checking.
This study contributes to previous research by revealing entry-level journalists' attitudes regarding responsible AI in local journalism and by introducing the mixed-methods Design Thinking approach as a valid method in journalism research.

Wilczek, B., Eder, M., Portugal, R., Thurman, N., & Haim, M. (9/2023). Journalism students' views on AI innovation and responsibility: Findings from a Design Thinking project in Germany. Presented at the Future of Journalism Conference, Cardiff. (content_copy)