The Rundown
An excellent AI newsletter that features industry news, financial stories on AI companies and how-tos. It’s usually the first newsletter I read each weekday morning.

Wonder Tools
CUNY’s Jeremy Caplan shares tools and hacks in this weekly newsletter, which includes many AI resources. His tools are useful for journalists but also anyone who wants a more-productive workload. He also does outstanding tools trainings over video for paid subscribers.

Tools for Reporters
My book co-author, Samantha Sunne, writes this brief newsletter centered on data journalism and efficiency tools. A must-read.

The Upgrade
Peter Bittner’s excellent newsletter serves as a “guide to Generative AI for professional storytellers.”

Newsroom Robots
Nikita Roy’s newsletter and podcasts focus on a wide range of AI and journalism issues. Another must-read.

AI + Education = Simplified
A free newsletter with paid upgrades. Covers many topics on implementing AI into classes, tools and policies.

The Grade
Alexander Russo’s Substack newsletter tackles many education issues, including tech.

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Sponsor

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Wayfinder AI Newsletter on LinkedIn

More Than 100 Journalism E-Newsletters
A great list compiled by Jeremy Caplan.

The Media CoPilot
Peter Pachal’s podcast interviews the movers and shakers in the AI world.

A Journalist’s Guide to AI
Journalism professor and media coach Yumi Wilson talks about AI ethics and practical uses of it in journalism.

This is just a small sample of what you can have your students follow. There are many other newsletters and podcasts on the Journalist’s Toolbox. And you can find more tools for journalism educators on the Journalist’s Toolbox.

More Tools and Research

Fact-Check Monitor
Live feed of fact-checked claims from 205 publishers worldwide.

Whisper Web
Free, browser-based transcription tool that converts audio and video files to text in 100+ languages with no signup required. It runs OpenAI’s Whisper model directly in your browser, so interview recordings never leave your device — a meaningful privacy protection for journalists. It’s a practical zero-cost option for reporters transcribing interviews on deadline.

AIGenTools
All-in-one AI platform for chat, image and video. Powered by leading AI models like GPT, Claude, Gemini, Seedance, Nano Banana, Kling, and more. From writing and research to AI image and video generation, create stunning visuals and smart ideas with ease.

Archive.ph
It takes a 'snapshot' of a webpage that will always be online even if the original page disappears. It saves a text and a graphical copy of the page for better accuracy and provides a short and reliable link to an unalterable record of any web page. Works around paywalls for articles you may want to read.

Sponsor

Be sure to check out the incredible production tools suite with our new sponsor at HeyNota.com

Textbooks

Data + Journalism, 2nd Edition

Samantha Sunne and I co-authored the 2nd Edition of the textbook, “Data + Journalism: A Story-Driven Approach to Learning Data Reporting” that is available from Routledge and other booksellers. It’s an introductory- to intermediate-level guide to learning data storytelling from A to Z. The second edition features new datasets, exercises and AI tools.

The Journalist’s Toolbox

My book, “The Journalist’s Toolbox A Guide to Digital Reporting and AI” was published by Routledge in 2023 and focuses on concepts and tools still used today. You can order it here.

In Quotes …

“We have no authoritative figure, no Walter Cronkite or Edward R. Murrow whom we all listen to and trust to sort out contradictory claims. Instead, the media is splintered into a thousand fragments, each with its own version of reality, each claiming the loyalty of a splintered nation.” ― Barack Obama

Follow me @itsmikereilley | @journtoolbox | Subscribe on YouTube | Subscribe to this newsletter

Copyright and Trademark 2026 | Mike Reilley

In April I wrote a newsletter about summarization tools and covering public meetings. But this summer, I learned about a tool that takes public meeting coverage to the next level.

An ONA webinar in late June featured SeeGov, a tool that summarizes, transcribes and provides video clips from public meetings. The tool was built by a nonprofit organization founded in September 2023 by Alex Rosen, now SeeGov’s executive director.

The tool also allows you to extract, edit, crop, produce and distribute social media videos from those meetings. It’s a cross between Nota’s social media video tool and Summarize.tech, which provides summaries of YouTube videos. SeeGov pulls video from YouTube as well as many other platforms, including Facebook.

SeeGov.org’s homepage

Connecting to the Audience: This tool connects meeting coverage to where media audiences spend their time: channels like YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and even community pages in Facebook. Meet the audience where it’s at. Many people, including younger generations, won’t make time to read a news article but will probably stop and watch a video summary of their city council voting for a large tax hike.

Sponsor: visualping

Please welcome our new sponsor, visualping. This is a tool I’ve been using for a long time, and its AI features added in the past few years have taken it to the next level.

Covering long city council and school board meetings is a tedious — but important — task for journalists. I’ve been recommending Summarize.tech for capturing summaries and reviewing meeting videos for the past few years. But SeeGov takes it a few steps further with content creation tools and distribution.

The tool is also being used by civic creators who are covering meetings for their communities. Users choose what to include in their social videos and add context to inform residents and expand democratic participation, just as a journalist would. The platform does not alter the source video.

SeeGov uses AI technology for some of the heavy lifting, but Rosen says there’s also a lot of human interaction in the second step of this process, featured in the slide below. Local residents and journalists help find the key agenda items.

Pricing: Rosen and his team launched the site with funding from the Knight Foundation. The tool is free but is soon introducing a pricing plan that starts with free for monitoring three government entities, then starting at $49 a month for more sites to monitor. There are discounts for smaller newsrooms and those that contribute content to the site.

The video editing is all text-driven (similar to Nota) and SeeGov gives you embed code, download and the chance to share it over multiple social media channels, including a direct line to its Reddit community.

Sponsor

Scale: For now, the tool covers 300 government entities, but will soon blossom to 2,000. It ranges from larger cities to small communities and hyperlocal coverage. It was beta-tested at the Illinois Times in Springfield, Illinois, and has been heavily used by local publications in Asheville and Durham, NC.

Try it out: The tool is intuitive to use, much like many AI tools where text prompts drive results. Training won’t take long. I just started with my ZIP code on the homepage, created a log-in and picked some city council meetings to explore.

Sponsor: Nota

Be sure to check out the incredible production tools suite with our longtime sponsor at HeyNota.com

AI Training

Peter Pachal of Media CoPilot has scheduled a new series of trainings on AI for journalists. Tne next six-class cohort is now live on his website.

This one goes deep. Besides the fundamentals of the Quick Start class, there are chapters on deep research, Gemini Notebooks, vibe coding, working agentically and more.

Former students can use the code VIP to get 25% anytime.

I’ve taken Peter’s classes in the past and I highly recommend it!

More Tools and Research

OpenArt Director
Launched in June 2026, this vibe-directing tool builds short videos from its chat.

Are You In the Weights?
Find out if your name or website appears in Large Language Models like ChatGPT, Claude, etc.

Flaurent Daudents: The Half of Journalism AI Can’t Do Yet
A new paper from Oxford and Stanford built a seven-agent “virtual newsroom.” Daudents tested it, and the result says less about whether AI can do journalism, more about which half of the job is still ours as journalists.

Fast
Check your internet speed

Textbooks

Data + Journalism, 2nd Edition

Samantha Sunne and I co-authored the 2nd Edition of the textbook, “Data + Journalism: A Story-Driven Approach to Learning Data Reporting” that is now available through Routledge and other booksellers. It’s an introductory- to intermediate-level guide to learning data storytelling from A to Z. The second edition features new tools, datasets, exercises and AI tools.

The Journalist’s Toolbox

My book, “The Journalist’s Toolbox A Guide to Digital Reporting and AI” was published by Routledge in 2023 and focuses on concepts and tools still used today. You can order it here.

In Quotes …

“Be curious, not judgmental.” — Ted Lasso, misquoting Walt Whitman, who never said this. (Still, it’s a good message, no matter who did or didn’t say it.)

Follow me @itsmikereilley | @journtoolbox | Subscribe on YouTube | Subscribe to this newsletter

Copyright and Trademark 2026 | Mike Reilley

The Federal Highway Administration posts data about its bridge inspections in US states and territories. The National Bridge Inventory database rates bridges as being in Good, Fair or Poor condition. By sorting and filtering the data in a spreadsheet, you can determine which states have the most bridges and highest percentage of bridges in each category. You also can create a new category -- Fair-Poor -- to group the sub-par bridges together.

Every two years, The Federal Highway Administration does more-detailed studies than the ARTBA research in 2017-2019. The 2023 National Bridge Inventory-Bridge Inspection Safety database ranks bridges in three categories: Good, Fair and Poor condition. With some sorting and filtering in a spreadsheet, you can determine which states have the most bridges and percentage of bridges in each category.

Video: Watch this video to follow along with exercise 1

You also can create a new category: “Fair-Poor condition” to group the sub-par bridges together.

Sponsor

We’re using Google Sheets for this exercise, but if you prefer Excel, you can follow the same steps, though the tools you’ll use are named a little differently. You’ll develop a preference over time.

1. Download the NBI dataset by scraping it this page below. We covered scraping in Chapter 3: https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/bridge/nbi/no10/condition23.cfm

=IMPORTHTML(”https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/bridge/nbi/no10/condition23.cfm“ ,”table”, 0)

*-If you are having trouble scraping the dataset, just download it or make a copy from here and save into your Google Drive: https://bit.ly/bridgedata2023

2. Once your sheet is scraped, label it and scroll slowly. See what the columns and rows represent, and make sure there are no empty or garbled cells. Data entry with some government entities can be spotty. If data is missing or garbled, contact the public information officer for that government agency to get the issue cleared up.

Pro tip: To move around quickly on a large dataset, hold down on the CMD (Apple) key and use the directional arrows to move up-down and side-to-side. On a PC, hold down the Control key and use the arrows.

Bridge inspections database in Google Sheets

3. Develop the habit of always working with a copy of the original data. By clicking this worksheet tab, you can duplicate it. You might do this repeatedly during your analysis, naming each sheet whenever you make a significant change to the data. That way, you will have an audit trail of your work.
   

4. The first row of any dataset you work with should be labels of what each column of data represents. It should never start with just the data. In this case, there are two rows of labels: Bridge Counts and Bridge Area (in meters) . For this exercise, we’ll focus on the Bridge Counts. Lock your column headings in place so that as you scroll down, you can always see what each column means. In Google Sheets, you do this by going to View > Freeze > 1 row.
   

5. Do a slow scroll through your dataset and make sure the set is complete and there are no empty or garbled cells. Data entry with some government entities can be spotty. Make sure your set passes initial inspection before starting any analysis. If data is missing or garbled, contact the public information officer for that government agency to get the issue cleared up.

For more data journalism tips, tricks and exercises, visit the Data + Journalism blog.

Sponsor: visualping

Please welcome our new sponsor, visualping. This is a tool I’ve been using for a long time, and its AI features added in the past few years have taken it to the next level.

Video

This training video will take you through the basics of using Google’s NotebookLM:

Sponsor: Nota

Be sure to check out the incredible production tools suite with our longtime sponsor at HeyNota.com

More Tools and Research

Chartle
Generates charts from plain English descriptions. Type something like “US newsroom employment over the last 20 years” and it finds the data, picks the right chart type, and renders it in seconds. It can also recreate charts from screenshots, which is useful for pulling editable visuals out of PDFs and reports

Simplifying AI Newsletter
Master AI daily without the overwhelm. Join 20,000-plus professionals getting practical tutorials, trending news, and tools that actually matter.

Powering the News
Free resources for “worker-friendly” newsrooms from the Reynolds Journalism Institute. It includes quizzes, guidebooks and templates. It also features a newsroom database, which is based on the first national survey of non-traditional, worker-friendly media.

Actually Relevant News
A news curation platform that crawls more than 80 sources across five languages daily, using LLM analysis to evaluate each article’s relevance to humanity on transparent criteria. It publishes only the most relevant stories across four issue areas (Human Development, Planet and Climate, Existential Threats, Science/Technology), with every story showing a full relevance analysis. Free to use with no ads, no tracking, and no paywall — plus a free public API, RSS feeds, weekly newsletter and a positivity slider that lets readers filter by emotional tone.

How 9 Facial Recognition Services Handle Images, Disclose Ownership, and More

Textbooks

Data + Journalism, 2nd Edition

Samantha Sunne and I co-authored the 2nd Edition of the textbook, “Data + Journalism: A Story-Driven Approach to Learning Data Reporting” that is available from Routledge and other booksellers. It’s an introductory- to intermediate-level guide to learning data storytelling from A to Z. The second edition features new tools, datasets, exercises and AI tools.

The Journalist’s Toolbox

My book, “The Journalist’s Toolbox A Guide to Digital Reporting and AI” was published by Routledge in 2023 and focuses on concepts and tools still used today. You can order it here.

In Quotes …

“AI is a tool. The choice about how it gets deployed is ours.” —Oren Etzioni, AI researcher

Follow me @itsmikereilley | @journtoolbox | Subscribe on YouTube | Subscribe to this newsletter

Let me begin by saying there is no perfect tool for detecting AI in writing. But I do use some detection tools as part of a larger formula when evaluating news stories, student assignments, press releases and even customer reviews of products.

Many studies have shown how AI detection tools are unreliable and can return false positives and false negatives with AI text detection. There was widespread panic in academia — trust me, I lived it — in 2021 and 2022 when professors randomly used AI checkers built into tools like TurnItIn.com and found several false positives. Students were suspended, denied graduation and accused of cheating.

But what many journalists and academics haven’t taken into account is how much these tools have improved over the past four years. This was a point Pangram CEO Max Spero made during a Hacks/Hackers AI Real Talk webinar earlier this month.

Pangram is among a handful of AI detection tools I use when evaluating writing. Spero says the fee-based tool boasts some impressive testing metrics for measuring AI detection accuracy rates:

1. It has a false positive rate of 1 in 10,000 (99.999 percent accurate)

2. It has a false negative rate of 1 in 100 (99 percent accurate)

The first number is the one I’m most concerned about. It’s why I don’t rely exclusively on detection tools like Pangram, GPTZero, Copyleaks and WinstonAI when evaluating student work that I suspect was written with AI.

Pangram has a monthly pay model or a $180 annual fee.

I use at least two of the tools to measure the differences in results. I check for sources and citations. Nearly all of the stories require a source to be interviewed, so I contact them to fact-check. I look for suspicious quotes, odd phrasing and often compare the writing to the student’s previous work.

Flaws in the Models
One flaw with detection models is evaluating non-native English speakers’ work. They write in simple sentences or use AI-driven translation tools that sometimes set off the detection tools. I take this into consideration when evaluating my international students’ work. In four years, it’s never been an issue to me.

I also look at the student’s original Google Document of the story and check the previous drafts (press the clock icon at the top of the doc). If 1,000 words suddenly pop into a draft a 4 a.m., it raises more suspicion.

I do allow my students to use AI to write headlines, edit stories and even assist with paraphrasing. That often sets off the detection tool, but typically returns a small percentage of AI detection, which I’m fine with.

Sponsor: visualping

Please welcome our new sponsor, visualping. This is a tool I’ve been using for a long time, and its AI features added in the past few years have taken it to the next level.

So there’s no single, surefire way to detect AI writing, but the aforementioned process gives me a clear picture. I’ve caught a few students over the past couple of years who have violated my AI writing policy in my syllabus. I go over it with them in week 1 and even demo the tools and discuss the process I use for catching them.

How are Models Trained?
Spero, who has a master’s degree from Stanford and previously worked as a Google software engineer, explained in detail on how the detection models are trained on millions of pieces of writing, ranging from news articles to academic journals.

It uses a process called synthetic mirroring, and studies traits of a human-written example vs an AI model. The bottom line question it asks: How confusing is the text to the AI model?

For example, the sentence: “The boy ate a bowl of soup” wouldn’t be confusing to the tool’s predictive model. However, the sentence, “The boy ate a bowl of spiders” would off alarms. This approach establishes a 95 percent accuracy model. The remaining 4 percent accuracy comes from intense training and texting.

A simple YouTube search on “Pangram” includes videos on how to use the tool, but others show how bypass Pangram detection with AI-written text.

Spero said most detection tools can catch copy that’s been “humanized” by online tools. But as Large Language Models get more widespread research to pull from, it makes it more challenging for detection models.

While today’s models are capable of detecting AI, will they keep up with superhuman models of the future? Only time will tell.

Footnote: Spero mentioned on the webinar that Superhuman just bought GPTZero in June. Superhuman tools work to humanize content, so it appears that the company wants to play both sides of the detection coin by adding GPTZero, which was built by Edward Tian when he was a senior in college several years ago.

Read more about OSINT tools and fact-checking on the Journalist’s Toolbox.

Video

Sponsor: Nota

Be sure to check out the incredible production tools suite with our longtime sponsor at HeyNota.com

More Tools and Research

Revise
A new, browser-based word processor with a built-in AI agent. Revise is designed for complex, full-document edits. It supports every major model (GPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok) in one place, with visual revision history so every AI change is trackable and reversible. Free model with upgrades starting at $8 a month.

We Detect: AI or Not?
A free, no-login image checker that returns a probability rather than a yes/no, and deletes the image right after analysis. It catches roughly 85% of Midjourney, DALL·E, SDXL, and Flux images, and it publishes its weak spots instead of hiding them.

AI for Newsrooms
Everything about AI for journalism in one place — curated for editors, reporters, and local newsrooms. Track real initiatives, policies, research, tools, and a daily newsfeed.

Indicator: Seven Web Scrapers Put to the Test

Higgsfield Explainer
Turn a topic into an explainer video

AI Top Hub
A directory of more than 5,000 AI tools organized by category with ratings and reviews

Textbooks

Data + Journalism, 2nd Edition

Samantha Sunne and I co-authored the 2nd Edition of the textbook, “Data + Journalism: A Story-Driven Approach to Learning Data Reporting” that will be available in August through Routledge and other booksellers. It’s an introductory- to intermediate-level guide to learning data storytelling from A to Z. The second edition features new tools, datasets, exercises and AI tools.

The Journalist’s Toolbox

My book, “The Journalist’s Toolbox: A Guide to Digital Reporting and AI” was published by Routledge in 2023 and focuses on concepts and tools still used today. You can order it here.

In Quotes …

"AI can make us faster, smarter and more informed, but it can't make us more caring, empathetic or trustworthy. That's still our job." — Shep Hyken, customer service and experience expert

Follow me @itsmikereilley | @journtoolbox | Subscribe on YouTube | Subscribe to this newsletter

“Vibe coding is the practice of describing what you want to build in plain language — and letting AI create it for you. No syntax. No debugging. You describe the vibe of what you want, and the AI handles the code.” – Jeremy Caplan, CUNY

The phrase “vibe coding” was coined by AI researcher Andrej Karpathy in 2025, who described it as a state where you “give in to the vibes, embrace exponentials, and forget that the code even exists,” according to Merriam-Webster Dictionary

How It Works

Instead of typing code line-by-line, a vibe coder interacts with AI-powered development environments like ChatGPT, Claude Artifacts, Gemini Canvas (watch rate limits), Lovable, Bolt (good for getting started), Cursor (good for applications), Replit (good for games) and many others to build an application or tool. It can be as simple as a countdown timer or as complex as a data visualization tool.

These small apps, when built specifically for newsrooms, can save hours of time for reporters, editors and others.

Pros and Cons

One of the big advantages of vibe coding is that it democratizes software development, allowing non-programmers me to build functional apps. It drastically speeds up prototyping and removes tedious syntax work. One of the biggest drawbacks: it can lead to “slop” or unstable apps. Because the developer often doesn’t understand the underlying code, it can be difficult to fix complex glitches, etc.

In the coming weeks, I’ll be launching some new tools with Journalist’s Toolbox that I vibe code, including one that will replace the soon-to-be-discontinued (thanks Open AI!) Custom GPT for finding specific tools for tasks. I’ll be sharing these tools in future newsletters.

In the meantime, here are some cool vibe-coded tools from Caplan and others:

Vibe Coder Pro
Caplan built this tool that helps you transform rough thoughts into master-class platform prompts. Scribble down your rough thought, and it crafts it into instructions an AI builder will adore.

Wonder Tools Data Visualizer
Upload your dataset and ask it to design a chart. Built by Caplan.

Note-Taking Tool Finder
Take a quiz to find the right type of tool for you.

Zen Focus
A customizable Pomodoro timer that works on desktop and mobile browsers. This app aims to help you focus on any task you are working on.

QuotePop
This app will turn any text or quote into an image file.

Montana EV Charging Network
Built by AlignSimple’s Kyle Rickhoff

Globe Visualization: US Troops
Displays U.S. deployed troops around the world, pulls from a CSV. Made by Syracuse professor Dan Pacheco.

Find more coding and vibe coding tools on the Journalist’s Toolbox

Poll

Sponsor

Be sure to check out the incredible production tools suite with our new sponsor at HeyNota.com

More Tools and Research

Journalism Expert Safety Support
An AI-powered tool designed to give journalists, editors and news organizations working across the United States greater access to essential safety information and guidance.

So You Still Think You Can Google?
Henk van Ess on Google shift to search agents in spring 2026.

Downr
Fast, free online media downloader that lets you paste a link and instantly save videos, audio, or images from YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and many other platforms without requiring sign-ups or annoying ads.

FlowSpeech
A context-aware AI text-to-speech tool for creators, educators, marketers, and product teams. It supports emotion control, pause control, and more than 30 voices to generate more natural voiceovers, narration, and spoken-content assets.

Textbooks

Data + Journalism, 2nd Edition

Samantha Sunne and I co-authored the 2nd Edition of the textbook, “Data + Journalism: A Story-Driven Approach to Learning Data Reporting” that will be available in August through Routledge and other booksellers (pre-order here). It’s an introductory- to intermediate-level guide to learning data storytelling from A to Z. The second edition features new tools, datasets, exercises and AI tools.

The Journalist’s Toolbox

My book, “The Journalist’s Toolbox A Guide to Digital Reporting and AI” was published by Routledge in 2023 and focuses on concepts and tools still used today. You can order it here.

In Quotes …

“AI is not just about replicating human intelligence; it’s about creating intelligent systems that can surpass human limitations” — Yann LeCun, French-American computer scientist

Follow me @itsmikereilley | @journtoolbox | Subscribe on YouTube | Subscribe to this newsletter

Copyright and Trademark 2026 | Mike Reilley

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Virtual Private Networks
Before I can file my students’ grades at UIC, I must first pass through two-factor authentication, then log-in through a virtual private network…

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