AI is no longer an experiment tucked away in the backrooms of media companies. It has become the invisible engine rewriting how news is gathered, drafted, edited and delivered at breakneck speed. Across newsrooms large and small, AI tools now draft briefs, translate reports, spot viral trends and repackage stories for different platforms faster than any human team ever could. For editors, this new reality brings a burst of productivity and a growing unease about what might be lost along the way. Rachel Chitra has seen this transformation unfold from the inside. When she first stepped into a newsroom, automation was barely more than a handful of templated stock updates and sports roundups. Today, as an assistant editor at The Federal and a former AI consultant at True Info Labs, Rachel knows better than most how deeply AI has moved into the control room of modern newsrooms. She remembers when the first wave arrived. Reuters and Bloomberg were among the pi

On World PR Day this year, as the communications industry reflects on the theme ”Building bridges and navigating polarisation,” public relations leaders are focusing on what truly anchors their profession: trust, adaptability and real-world impact. Abhinay Kumar Singh, founder and MD of Adgcraft PR finds this year’s theme a reminder of the deeper responsibilitiesof a PR professional. “We are in the middle of brands and the target groups,” he says. “Therefore, it is essential to focus on their understanding, effective communication and authenticity.” Singh focuses on “trust, opportunity and growth” for the upcoming year. With shifting platforms giving way to social media and AI, he believes in crafting resonant and adaptive strategies. His agency recently launched their new PR vertical, Adgcraft.AI, to help AI brands with their communication strategies.  “Finding the right people for PR has always been crucial. We need to be prompt, understanding and deep

Techpartner.news has launched its new self-titled podcast, with host Ben Moore explaining it was born out of “a desire to serve the tech partner community in a new and different way under the tech partner news brand”. Moore told Influencing, “We wanted to have these in-depth discussions with technology partners so other people in the ecosystem could learn and gain a deeper understanding about what's going on that could help inform their own practice or gain a broader understanding of the industry. Moore added that the podcast's aim was the same as the publication’s, “which is to inform our audience”. “The [Channel] industry is vast, a growing industry, a disparate industry, but it never stops moving. We want to ensure that we are doing our best to get the information that partners need to know within Australia and New Zealand.  “This is so that [partners and vendors] can succeed, know what's going on, and understand the movements, trends, and insights that are go

<> The Conversation has moved away from traditional fact-checking in favour of a more constructive approach to combating misinformation, according to editor-in-chief Misha Ketchell. In a revealing interview on Influencing Insider, Ketchell explained why the publication closed its fact-checking department, citing concerns about the confrontational nature of fact-checking journalism. "Fact checking is so sanctimonious at the end of the day. It's so 'I'm right and you're wrong. You got it wrong. Gotcha,'" Ketchell said.  "The difficulty with that is that it's combative and you end up sort of preaching to the choir." Instead, The Conversation is focusing on what Ketchell calls "pre-bunking" - providing accurate information before people encounter misinformation.  "We're trying to present information in a more neutral way," he explained. The publication maintains its commitment to academic expertise, continuing journalism's traditional role of providing expert context to new

PANDER POLITICS  It’s Friday and finally sub editors around the country can start looking forward to a time when they can stop thinking exclusively in China puns. There have been some doozies — “Great Gall of China,” “Nice to Xi You,” “Any Storm in a Port” (think Darwin) — and a few wince-inducers, like The Daily Telegraph’s “PM Goes Weak at the Chinese.” Today’s entrant is “Panda Politics,” the homophone doing duty to frame the trip as indulgent, wavering, groveling — at least according to the opposition.  In The Age (“PM rejects opposition claims on China”) and The Sydney Morning Herald (“PM eyes 'rewards' of panda politics”), Paul Sakkal addresses those critiques directly. Albanese has shrugged off barbs that his stops to visit soccer coaches, a tennis centre, a really very old long wall, and a big bamboo muncher or two were self-indulgent, arguing instead that Australia will reap economic benefits from demonstrating

Image source: The Hindu, Business Today, PM India, Raw Pixel and Tribune India; Edited by Dinesh Raj M The government’s latest flagship agriculture push, the Prime Minister Dhan-Dhaanya Krishi Yojana (PMDDKY), has been met with a mix of optimism and cautious scrutiny in the press. At the heart of the Rs 24,000-crore-a-year initiative lies the convergence of 36 schemes from 11 ministries, targeting 100 low-performing districts–a scale not seen in any prior agri-scheme. Hot Off the Press The Hindu dissected the scheme’s operational vision, highlighting that committees at national, state and district levels will lead planning and execution. Notably, each District Dhan-Dhaanya Samiti will include progressive farmers and prepare plans aligned to national goals such as crop diversification, water conservation and organic farming. The inclusion of private sector partnerships was flagged as a key pillar. Meanwhile, Hindustan Times framed the scheme’s urgency and potential reac

After completing a full refurbishment of the publication’s website, GadgetGuy’s Valens Quinn believes that many publishers see, “the landscape is changing about the way people consume content,” and as a result, it's “important to keep up with the times.”  “What we wanted to do with Gadget Guy was to do two things. One, it allows us to post quicker because there is an overhead to writing articles, getting all the images, and entering them into the CMS,” Quinn told Influencing.  “Two, it was to take content from all the places we invest in. We're putting a lot of effort into video and socials, and you must create content relevant to that platform.” After the new publication’s website was soft-launched in May, Quinn said the main changes were on the homepage.  “We have our tech ticker, which is the main feed. We've designed the tech ticker to include in-feed articles, meaning you read them directly. That could be our latest social posts that you're alread