Discovery
how you find stories, monitor situations and look for angles
Discovery is how a newsroom finds stories, watches situations as they develop, and looks for angles others miss. Tips, beats, social feeds, and public data all feed this step. AI can scan large volumes of sources for signals, so the question is what it surfaces, what it buries, and who decides what counts as a story.
Questions to explore
- How do story ideas reach your newsroom today, and which sources do you trust most?
- What kinds of stories tend to slip past you because no one was watching the right place?
- Where could AI help you monitor more sources or spot patterns earlier in a developing situation?
- What might be lost if a tool, rather than a reporter, decides which signals are worth a closer look?
- How would you check that an AI prompt is not steering everyone toward the same obvious angles?
Expert voices
“Ask AI for five surprising angles on a story and let them challenge your editorial instinct.”
“Most newsroom tip channels are full of rubbish. With little technical effort and some AI, you can build systems that sort out the relevant tips.”
“Do not just react to single claims. Monitor what claims are being pushed and learn to recognize recurring misinformation patterns before they peak.”
Things to consider
- A tool that scans more sources can still miss the story a single tip would have surfaced.
- Be clear about which feeds and datasets any AI tool is actually drawing from.
- Keep a human deciding what rises to a story, not just what gets flagged.
Pull Discovery when it is relevant and set it aside when it is not. Pair it with the other Journalism cards, lay them out on a table, and use the questions above to get everyone on the same page. Capture what you discuss on sticky notes or in a shared doc.
More Journalism cards
