Tong Li

COO of Southern Journalists Entrepreneurship，Former Chinese reporter

[Tong Li @torenceli]

One of the better newsroom AI use cases:

POLITICO consolidated 6 CMSs into one system and can now use AI to help analyze 20,000 ICE detention rulings, monitor legislative data and reduce workflow friction.

https://t.co/B1RD5aqKlX

[Tong Li @torenceli]

Interesting lesson from FOIAball:

A paywalled scoop produced 1 new paid subscriber.

A free scoop produced 3.

People often don’t subscribe because one article is locked away.

https://t.co/0JzV0CU7gX

[Tong Li @torenceli]

AI monitoring public meetings and helping local reporters find stories? Useful.

AI sites repackaging existing local journalism and calling it “rebuilding local news”? That’s extraction, not innovation.

https://t.co/qTzE0uhr0L

[Tong Li @torenceli]

AI helping research or fact-check an op-ed? Fine.

AI substantially writing the op-ed? That deserves disclosure.

A byline is supposed to mean more than “this person agrees with the output.”

https://t.co/i1cODBIfpm

[Tong Li @torenceli]

标题是来搞笑的，下面才是正经的：

变得“社会化一点”，看上去是一个人从学生到职场的必经之路。但在职场待久了，鸡汤文又在奉劝你“不要被社会磨平棱角”。

我们好像没有讨论过，到底什么叫“社会化”，“社会化”是一件“好事”吗，“社会化”和“做自己”冲突吗？

https://t.co/e9fNEXrZA4

[Tong Li @torenceli]

Daily Mail, BBC, CNN and Fox News have each added 11M+ TikTok followers since 2024.
Young audiences clearly haven’t stopped caring about news. They’re just consuming it differently.
Newsrooms should learn vertical video and platform-native storytelling.
https://t.co/QzfErEy1DS

[Tong Li @torenceli]

The best part of Google’s Backstory isn’t AI detection.

It’s context.

Reverse-image search, provenance, watermarks + a timeline of where an image appeared can tell journalists far more than a black-box “87% AI” score.

And it still gets things wrong.

https://t.co/7HOLNY7lhR

[Tong Li @torenceli]

Newsrooms don’t need to turn every reporter into an influencer.
But they should learn from creators.
The Athletic’s model makes sense: creators bring personality, platform fluency + audience instinct; journalists bring reporting, editing + fact-checking.

https://t.co/bKbKFDkkUO

[Tong Li @torenceli]

Prism News built 200+ AI “local news” sites, repackaged reporting from real outlets under fictional bylines, produced no original journalism — and now the network is gone.

A news desert is not a shortage of websites.

https://t.co/0V29gCmzML

[Tong Li @torenceli]

Reddit turning posts into AI-narrated videos could be useful for accessibility.

But Reddit’s real value isn’t the text. It’s knowing there are actual people behind it.

https://t.co/vKLXu5CDos

[Tong Li @torenceli]

年轻的时候，“变得更好”好像是一件不需要解释的事情。

成绩更好一点，工作往上走一点，收入更高一点，身体更好一点，效率更高一点。

直到快四十岁了，我们才开始问：为什么一定要更好？

这一期，我们从“躺平”聊起。

https://t.co/Besjk2CTdQ

[Tong Li @torenceli]

AI helping a local reporter draft records requests and catch missing government documents? Great.

AI helping justify one reporter covering two counties larger than Rhode Island? Much less convincing.

That’s the tension in Axios’s bet.

https://t.co/nbmraMOTUx

[Tong Li @torenceli]

Apple reportedly wants to pay publishers when Siri AI actually uses their journalism.

Good principle: if reporting creates value for an AI answer, the newsroom should share in that value.

https://t.co/m5IVBCbQpM

[Tong Li @torenceli]

What if public media built social media around civic value instead of engagement?

https://t.co/M7alx60FnX is trying: no follower counts, chronological feeds, pro-social reactions + paid human community stewards.

https://t.co/nRF2fxJuoj

[Tong Li @torenceli]

Ad tech isn’t just about targeting ads.

The same real-time bidding infrastructure can expose where your phone is — and that location data can end up with brokers or government customers.

Tools like DecryptAds help make the system visible.

https://t.co/BLVY0P3PId

[Tong Li @torenceli]

Fake sites copying major news brands, filling them with AI-generated PR, then selling “guaranteed coverage” aren’t journalism.

They’re counterfeiting journalism’s credibility.

Good PR can pitch a story. It cannot guarantee independent coverage.

https://t.co/vs1uL5vNuR

[Tong Li @torenceli]

Maybe we don’t need another algorithm claiming to tell us what’s “true.”

Japan’s Originator Profile takes a smarter approach: cryptographically verify who actually published something.

It won’t replace fact-checking.

https://t.co/QbzbpGHY58

[Tong Li @torenceli]

Publisher-owned AI is a lot more interesting than outside platforms summarizing journalism and keeping the audience.

The NY Post’s Hamilton uses its own reporting for search and personalization while retaining editorial control.

https://t.co/xIn2YCvWDj

[Tong Li @torenceli]

More comments don’t necessarily mean better engagement.

A study of nearly 1M NYT comments found that data-rich, analytical stories drew fewer commenters—but more evidence-based arguments and reader-to-reader discussion.

https://t.co/F0XL3DSxkh

[Tong Li @torenceli]

SPJ is updating its ethics code for the AI era without writing rules around any specific AI tool.

That’s the right approach.

Whatever technology journalists use, humans still own the accuracy, verification and consequences.

https://t.co/5QmJwQ62fi