At last month’s Digital Media India conference, an expert panel tackled these issues head-on in a session titled ‘Adapting to Digital: The Editorial Imperatives.’ 

Moderated by Shelly Walia, Executive Editor of The Quint, the discussion featured Mukesh Sharma, Director of Journalism and Co-Founder of the BBC’s news provider in India, Collective Newsroom, and Santhosh George Jacob, Coordinating Editor at Manorama Online.

The panel focused on how newsrooms can strategically adopt AI while reinforcing their editorial core. The message was clear: while AI can support newsroom efficiency, it must be implemented with trust, transparency, and human oversight.

“Trust is the foundation of the journalism we are doing with the audiences that come to us,” said Sharma, “and labelling content with AI is key to building and retaining audiences’ trust.”

Declining audiences, declining trust… and now, declining search referrals, are major challenges for newsrooms. At the same time, younger audiences are turning to social platforms, often algorithmically controlled and misinformation-prone, as their primary news source. 

This makes rebuilding trust and strengthening brand visibility even more critical in the age of AI.

As more newsrooms – and audiences – are adopting AI, the rapid increase in use of  AI search agents and functionalities presents an even greater challenge to newsrooms in terms of content discovery.

“Some predictions are that 50% of the search traffic will move to platforms in the next two to three years, and most publishers are aware of it, and are taking steps to correct it,” notes Jacob.

Spotlight on the search for new audiences

“The challenge is actually to get new audiences – especially the new and younger audiences,” said Sharma, a challenge to even an outlet like Manorama, with strong youth brands, notes Jacob.

“Our total traffic from social media and search is probably less than 20% so we always rely on direct traffic,” but for this particular segment of audience, we are trying to attract them from social media through reels and things like that.”

The solution, beyond adopting new tech, say both Jacob and Sharma, lies in a deeper investment in brand building and positioning, and greater importance to direct brand traffic. 

“For that, we’ll have to increase branding. We have to do a lot of branding exercises. Instead of wasting your time and effort on branding for SEO and even social, we’ll have to do direct branding and get direct traffic. It will take some time, but it will definitely give you a valuable and credible audience,” explains Jacob. 

Jacob illustrates with Manorama’s fact-checking efforts across various platforms, which paid off. “Now people are coming to our site to verify the veracity of content; our fact-checking section has experienced a 300% growth, and our traffic to the site has remained stable for the past 1-2 months,” he explained.

“It’s important for news brands to have their clear identity and brand positioning in the market, for each brand to understand what we are and how we are positioned in the market, explains Sharma.

“So the news brands need to have that brand positioning and identity; the differentiator is in how you position yourself, and then you stick to that. 

That’s where  audiences are going to come to, because the brand is positioned on trust.”

Key strategies to build audience trust around AI usage

Both Sharma and Jacob maintain that being upfront about AI usage, while reinforcing that human expertise and editorial standards remain core and integral to the journalistic process, helps build credibility and shows commitment to transparency – hence the need to be particular about its usage.

• Clear, Prominent Labelling: Use straightforward language that explicitly states the content involves AI assistance or generation. For example, “This article was partially generated using AI tools and verified by human editors.”
• Specify AI’s Role: Explain exactly how AI was used – whether for translation, data analysis, summarisation, or content generation.
• Maintain Human Oversight: Emphasise that human journalists still review, fact-check, and edit AI-generated content to ensure accuracy and quality.
• Be Transparent About the Process: Provide a brief explanation of your AI usage guidelines and editorial standards.
• Consistent Placement: Ensure the AI disclosure is visible and consistent across different types of content.