Jen Austin: AI In The Newsroom

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  0:02  
The sound off podcast, the show about podcast and broadcast starts now.

Matt Cundill  0:13  
I've spent the better part of the last decade focused on podcasting, and AI has helped with a few things, making podcast production better. Transcriptions come faster. There are some audio repair tools that make the show sound better, and at times it's expedited my creative writing. However, there is a dark side, and that's work being repurposed without my permission. And, of course, the creation of Pod Sloth. If you're a regular subscriber to Pod News, you've likely heard of a company called Inception Point AI. They make 3000 podcast episodes a week across 10,000 shows, all with AI voices, some of whom identify as doctors and provide medical advice. Places like that are more unhelpful than helpful in the podcast world, but what about radio, and specifically news radio? Between the usual layoffs, the defunding of NPR, the Donald Trump failed shutdown of Voice of America, and the closure of CBS News. You know what AI might be of use here. Jen Austin is the founder of Ripley, an AI production assistant for existing human-created media. It helps deliver accurate, hyper-local news to your listeners. That sounds like something radio needs, so I decided to find out a little bit more. And now Jen Austin joins me from Dallas. Jen, why did you want to get into radio?

Jen Austin  1:30  
It's all the communicator, and in fact, I remember walking across the gym floor in my little high school in rural Nebraska. I was a class of 12, but mr. Blessing, the communications teacher, accosted me in the gym, and he said, "You got to be on the speech team, and I was so shy and scared to death, like, "I don't want to be on the speech team, but he noticed something about me, I don't know what still, but he got me on the speech team, and I started communicating that way, and I thought, "Okay, maybe I do like this, and I was, he was bringing me out of my shell and helping me a lot of ways, so I started communicating that way, and then I became a Husker football fan, and went to the University of Nebraska, and got into speech and communication there, and broadcasting, and then it just kept going, kept going, and I just kept finding opportunities. So I guess the love for communication, connecting with an audience, that was really what drew me to radio,

Matt Cundill  2:18  
and that's how you got to KZ KX, everyone's got some first call letters.

Jen Austin  2:23  
Yes, 96 kicks, that was the first one. Those are good. KZ KX, those are good call letters in Lincoln, Nebraska. Yes, I started as a non-paid intern, and I was pretty much a board op, and I got coffee for the afternoon guy, and we talked, and he would sort of groomed me for doing the night show, and at last time there were 24/7 there were live people in the building, and so it was different than it is now. But I started doing the seven to midnight show eventually, and meeting country artists, and interviewing country artists, and I remember I walked into his office, Charlie Thomas at KZKX, and he told me nobody's ever sounded that good, and their first bit on the radio is a Victoria Shaw song, 16 second into our members, way back in the 90s, and he was lying to me, I know he was, because it was terrible. I listen back now, I'm like, oh, but he encouraged me to keep going and to do my thing, and that one thing led to another. So, yes, Country Radio in Lincoln, Nebraska,

Matt Cundill  3:19  
weren't the 90s great, though

Jen Austin  3:20  
they're the best. I was thinking about that today. You go to Ticketmaster and get your tickets, paper tickets, you'd hold them in your hand, you go to Dillard's on a Saturday morning, 10 o'clock, because there was a Ticketmaster outlet in there, and get the tickets, the handheld tickets, and put them on your fridge when the concert was over, and those are all souvenirs now. But yeah, I really love the 90s for so many reasons. That's one.

Matt Cundill  3:41  
Towards the end of the 90s, we had Napster, and I said, "Oh man, isn't this great? And my music friends weren't so happy about it, and they didn't really like it. And I mentioned that now because I'm thinking a lot about Napster, and I'm thinking a lot about AI, and they're very similar in the way they acquire product and repurpose it and pass it out again, so what were your feelings when Napster, you know, hit in 99 2000 2001

Jen Austin  4:07  
Yeah, I thought, well, it's different, you know, I'm a radio girl at heart too, and I fight everything that's going to take the place of radio or give people a different way to listen, and then eventually it's like, okay, let's not fight it, let's just all enjoy music, and we can still, there's a place for everybody, and so we can all live happily ever after, but yeah, I was just.. I kept doing my own shows, my own thing during the Napster days, but you know, I mean, my kids now find different ways to consume music, and it's fine. So I.. I'm a fan of all of

Matt Cundill  4:33  
it. I gotta ask this one, because you were a producer on the legendary morning show, The Dorsey Gang,

Jen Austin  4:38  
yes, with

Matt Cundill  4:39  
Terry and Hawkeye.

Jen Austin  4:40  
Yeah, Terry, I mean, he's taught me so much. I mean, first of all, he was hilarious on the air, but off the air too. And he'd be during commercial breaks, look at this cat video on YouTube, and then he'd be talking about that, laughing, and immediately become Terry Dorsey as soon as the headphones came on, you know, and the music came, or came back from commercial, and he was just delightful to be around. And yeah, Hawkeye was just, he was putting bits together constantly, and everything you said, you could tell something was going on in his mind, a spark was about to happen, he's gonna think of a bit, but and Rebecca, they were all fantastic on that show.

Matt Cundill  5:12  
What was your role on the show as producer? What did you do?

Jen Austin  5:15  
I ran the board, and I came up with ideas, and contributed to the show. Every once in a while, they draw me in on bits, and number one, I'd be singing along in the studio, and Hawkeye would record me and play it back on the air, and then they'd laugh at me on the air, that kind of stuff, kind of comedic relief. Then I'd do a Saturday morning show for KSCs too, but a lot of board up and run and giving ideas and helping produce the show.

Matt Cundill  5:36  
So I mentioned that because I think it's really important that people know that you've been in the center at the spot where the phone rings, where the personalities are talking at you, and it's two minutes to the top of the hour, and you need something to go, you know, radio really, really well. And I think from there, after that, you started to work at Town Square for a number of years.

Jen Austin  5:56  
Yes, Town Square, many stations and Classic Kids, Classic Rock for town square a lot, but yeah, middays and afternoons, I think I have done every day part at some point, either producing a morning show, Kid Craddock, too. I did traffic reports for Kid Craddick for a number of years too on Kiss FM in Dallas, and yeah, so I think every role from producer to traffic reporter to voice tracker, midday personality, and but just always finding a way to connect with an audience, that's what it was really about for me, and learning from people like Kid Craddick and Terry Dorsey and Hawkeye. It's been really incredible,

Matt Cundill  6:27  
and working at Town Square, from what I know, and for the amount of time that I spent in American Radio, and talking with the people from Town Square, they're quite plugged into digital, like that's part of the system, is they don't ignore digital, they embrace it, and they find ways to intertwine it into the radio that you do when you were part of that team for a long time.

Jen Austin  6:46  
Yes, and writing articles every day. I wrote articles for Town Square, and that is really a focus for Town Square, the digital first mentality. And then everything we talk about on the air is like, go check out the app, go check out the website, and there's more there, local stories, and they're so good. All the personalities at Town square, so good at digging up really personal information and going to those locations and taking pictures of restaurants opening, or having ice cream on the waterfront in Buffalo, and stuff like that. They're just very plugged in, and they really are local first and digital first.

Matt Cundill  7:14  
At what point between 2010 and 2025 I'll call it, was the biggest problem for news radio. At what point did it take a dive, and why did it take a dive? And newsrooms began to cut back and empty out. Can you point to one particular time, or has it just been a slow drip?

Jen Austin  7:32  
I think it's been a slow drip. Positions eliminated. I mean, my position at iHeart, many years ago, I walked into the HR office, you get called in there, you know what's happening, you're going to be laid off. Okay, I understand. You know, it's a business, and so they have to make, they have to find efficiencies and go with those. And I think that's what it's been about, just trying to make radio more efficient, and still there's a lot of pressure to be plugged in locally at the same time while they're being efficient. So I think that's been just a gradual process, and every time I think, well, that they're skeleton, bare bones, they can't get any smaller, there's more layoffs, you know, and I think it's just been a gradual process over 10 or 15 years.

Matt Cundill  8:09  
Yeah, so the cutbacks go up because it becomes less profitable, but the appetite for news and the necessity for news and communities has not gone away, and from what I can see and read, over the last couple of years, we've had the Voice of America internationally has taken a hit, it was mothballed and then de mothballed, NPR defunded, and then came CBS News disappearing altogether, just in the last few weeks. How big is the hole in news radio in America right now?

Jen Austin  8:43  
I think it's huge, you know. There, CBS was a huge network, and now that's a big void, and it's been replaced. You know, ABC has stepped in in some places, and other, and other networks, but there's still a void. And I remember going to CBS News, it was nine 1101 and I was doing the news in Austin on my morning show that I was on at the time, and you know, 911 happened, and the trade centers are going down, and we're trying to process what's happening while doing a show live on the air. What's gone, so we just went to that CBS feed eventually, and that was so helpful, you know, is there when people needed it, big national feed, and that's gone, and it's sad, as a, you know, fan of radio, and someone who used or relied on CBS Network in a way, but now I think there are other opportunities for companies like Ripley Media that I'm building to come in and replace some of that. We've got, you know, national news and local news, and it can fill some gaps, and it's very fast, and we have new technology now with AI to generate news quickly, and to get right in there with coverage immediately.

Matt Cundill  9:46  
How long has Ripley been in the works?

Jen Austin  9:48  
About 11 months. We've been developing it, testing it. It's been a, you know, a process. You hear about AI technology, and you really, what we've done is create a human eye that goes out there and looks. Around the web for stories, mine mostly molded after the way I look around for news, and just for stories, and then but making that into a logical command and intelligence platform to go out there and look for news, and so it's been a project for a little bit less than a year, but testing and refining and redoing and finding the best sources, where there's a press release from a sheriff's office or the TV station that we credit, it's been a process of pointing in the right direction, but we've been able to do that.

Matt Cundill  10:32  
Was there a point where you said, "Okay, I'm going to jump? What's the point where you say, "Yeah, I'm going to jump in and do this? Because this is a huge venture.

Jen Austin  10:40  
It is a huge venture, and I realized about halfway in, like, okay, this is a huge venture, but I immediately, the people I connected with on this team, I mean, I just could not do it. It is a logical thing, you know. They liked my experience and my ability. I liked their experience. We've got business leaders on the team, we've got me in the radio world, we've got marketing and development that everybody brings something different, and even, you know, television and technology represented, represented on our advisory board. And so I think it was just an easy, easy lift for me to decide to jump in and do it. Risky, but fun.

Matt Cundill  11:14  
Well, I get the feeling that you don't have to be a radio station to want this product.

Jen Austin  11:19  
I don't think you do. I think you know you could use it as a podcast, right. It's just local information that comes back. We've got national news, national entertainment, celebrity news, all the regular show prep stuff. But any podcast that's looking to be local and speak to their community, I've got a friend who also has a national radio streaming radio station that he's thinking about using the product for his national audience, we've got state by state coverage, so you could select Texas or developing Canada. We're, you know, anywhere you are, you can customize it for where you are and bring back local content to talk about, and it saves a lot of time, you know. Might say, I was writing for two or three hours a day prior to this, and now, you know, 15 minutes, log in and look and see what's going on. There it

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Matt Cundill  12:37  
So I'll ask you a little bit about how it works, but I just want to sort of clarify, and maybe ask you to alleviate a few fears, because when I hear AI, I always, it's artificial intelligence, but I always like to say, oh, it's assisted intelligence, if I can use AI as assisted intelligence, I feel like I'm doing a better job, and the way you've, you know, framed Ripley is it's AI assisted, and so there's still a huge human component involved here,

Jen Austin  13:04  
exactly. And I am part of that, and we've got a team of humans that are steering it, you know. We're not, it's not just a freight train that's just wild running everywhere, it's, it's very, it's on that, it's on the tracks, and we've worked with it and to develop it, you know, I mean, anybody goes to any AI engine, Chat GPT or Clod or Gemini, you give it commands, and I'd like to help with that, but what about this, and you know, wants to be helpful, it's like a little friend, it wants to be helpful, and then you just have to tell it where to go and refine it, and then it's we found it to be very accurate, we tell it where to go down this narrow path every day, answer the same questions every time, come back with the right answers, and that's eliminated hallucinations, and all the things that people tend to fear about AI. It's very accurate, it's very responsibly sourced. We see exactly where the stories are coming from, and that's stamped on every script that we up that you can download that we upload, and so it's all very clear and transparent and accurate,

Matt Cundill  14:03  
and this is not about AI replacing journalism at all, right?

Jen Austin  14:06  
No, in fact, I think it makes us better, you know, it gives us more time, the it completes repetitive tasks, so that we're more free to do other things, and to, you know, you can call for an interview while it's doing the writing for you, you have the script right there, so you know you can supplement with something else, or you know, I think it just frees up a lot of time and makes us better and gives us more time for creativity.

Matt Cundill  14:29  
So, let's use the example of a small town radio station in a small town. How many sources do you really need to connect to to get some good, accurate local information? Because maybe there's no more newspaper, and maybe the radio station doesn't have enough, so how many sources do you need to, you know, to train or to vet, or do you, would you have, you know, AI look elsewhere?

Jen Austin  14:49  
Well, we like to have 10 or 15 sources in every market, maybe 50, you know, if it's a large market, but in the case where I mean, I grew up in rural Nebraska, and so there was probably one. Now, defunct newspaper, but it, I'm used to that small environment, and so a lot of times the Chamber of Commerce will post, they'll have a newsroom on their site, colleges in the area will have newsrooms, hospitals post news releases, and then you know, sometimes, like in my little town in rural Nebraska, maybe nothing's happened, and then so we go out a little bit further, a little further, just as a human I would, our tool does the same thing. It's got a radius, and if there's nothing happening there, if something is happening, it'll find it. If there's nothing happening, it goes out a little bit further geographically.

Matt Cundill  15:31  
What should be in a newsroom ecosystem in 2026 in radio?

Jen Austin  15:38  
I think everybody's using AI. I think it's got to be there, I think. A lot of times they bigger companies will think, well, I'll just put an intern in that seat and they'll tell AI to bring me the local news, and it'll do it, but that intern is going to do the same task over and over, or part-timer, and it's not going to be any more effective than if than it was. You've got to have some sort of helper there to make it more effective, like Ripley, but it saves a lot of time and has the right commands that don't have to be done over and over and over, but I think people have to use AI. I think people, I mean, you've got to have that local connection, that's what everybody's looking for. So, still, you know, going out in the community, talking to local folks, letting listeners connect, send email tips. I mean, some sort of connection with a newsroom is what people want, and then you know that makes them loyal listeners too.

Matt Cundill  16:28  
So, I have never built a piece of technology. I just, I thought about it. I have a few things in mind now, but for you, going through the process and the deadlines and early morning deadlines, what has that taught you about building technology?

Jen Austin  16:43  
Well, it's great when the early morning deadlines come and the material is already there for me, and I don't have to think about it, and you know, wake up in my coffee and try to write it, it's already there. But yeah, deadlines, these what we molded it exactly like that. We know people have deadlines, and so with Ripley, the scripts are there at certain times, you know, exactly. You can log in at 4:45am 530 and it's going to be there ready, and so it takes a little pressure off of that deadline, and therefore stress for the anchors. But yeah, I mean, newsrooms revolve around deadlines. We've created Ripley to be exactly like that.

Matt Cundill  17:16  
Why'd you call it Ripley?

Jen Austin  17:17  
I wanted a vision of an ocean, you know, this constant swell of information. I love the water. I'm a swimmer, and I like that every day, but to have just currents all day and little ripples of information, it's always there. So we want to just gather it up and offer it and capture those waves. And so Ripley came out of that, and my genius marketing partner, Kara, came up with that name, Ripley. We all, we had a list of, you know, 2025 we just kept whittling down, and Ripley was just, it was always there. So it's just to show that we have that wealth of information.

Matt Cundill  17:50  
Yeah, the first thing that crossed my mind was something from the 80s, and that was the newswire, where you'd rip and read.

Jen Austin  17:56  
Yes,

Matt Cundill  17:57  
right.

Jen Austin  17:58  
I actually mentioned that to them too. I thought, what about rip and read, and it one example I think of when I think of Rip and Read, my at Case 101 another station I worked at in Austin, Texas. There was a one person newsroom, and his name was Jerry back there in the newsroom, and he had that noisy dot matrix printer with the Rip and Read, and it was so I was doing a traffic break in the background, and it would be going off and interrupting my break, but he would always, he would rip and read, and he would stack it, you know, papers, and then he write some news stories, but that was part of his newscast, and so that makes me feel happy, I guess. The nostalgia of the rip and read too, but but no, he did it. Now, if he had Ripley, he would save a lot of time.

Matt Cundill  18:37  
What's the difference between actual local journalism and a content feed?

Jen Austin  18:40  
Local journalism is more creative, more I would argue responsibly sourced. It's there's a better emotional connection for an audience, local journalism, and that's one thing that really is dear to my heart too, because I love local journalism, and I majored in journalism, and all these journalists that have been let go are part of restructuring. I want them to have opportunity too, and so I continue to write and create, because I think that's what people connect to. And then the feeds are just to me more generic and more one size fits all, where local journalism gets in those niches.

Matt Cundill  19:14  
Tell me about some of the stories from the early adopters that you've, that you're working with so far. What are they finding? And if you feel free to mention maybe something that you didn't think would happen, that's good or bad.

Jen Austin  19:26  
A lot of them have been, you know, wow, you can do it, and it's that's been great to hear. I mean, we knew we could do it, but to hear them say that and reflect that, because there is, like you said, there's that AI hesitancy, or is it going to work, or can we do this in newsrooms, and is it going to replace me? No, it's not going to replace journalism. It just makes journalists better, but they're happy with the product, and many of them have helped us get there. I'll use the example of Kingston, New York - they're an area in New York, in the Hudson Valley, that has just many. Small towns and medium-sized towns, you've got Kingston and White Plains and Poughkeepsie, and many outside of New York City condensed area, and so trying to cover all of them in a one-minute newscast and find the most important stories. At first, it was a little too far out, you know, we had the Bronx and we have New York City in there, and then we said, "Okay, let's point it this way and refine even more. And then Kingston and Poughkeepsie, Poughkeepsie, and Dutchess County and Ulster County started popping up all the time, like, "Okay, we captured it, you know, and we gave them what they needed in terms of their local scripts. And so that's been gratifying and great to hear, but it's a reminder that it can always be customized, it can always be changed and tweaked to really hit the local target.

Matt Cundill  20:46  
So, for the version that's out there now, you're going to tell us what it is, but give me a small sneak peek about something that's in your mind that you think you can add to Ripley next year to take it to the next level.

Jen Austin  20:59  
We're thinking about video, you know, right now we have the scripts that are generating, and they can be voiced by an AI voice or a human voice, or local staff can read the scripts on the radio station, and so it's very versatile, but a video, you know, that has some either scenery in the background with narration or some sort of match for the script and a video, so we're thinking about that, like I mentioned, Canada's in development now, and so we have a lot of US news, and that was our focus, because we had to start somewhere, but there's no reason why it can't go global, and so you know, Canada and the UK, maybe next.

Matt Cundill  21:33  
I know some people in Canada,

Jen Austin  21:35  
I bet you do. I would love to provide some content for you.

Matt Cundill  21:38  
Excellent. Also, some of the distribution for this I saw when I was reading up on this was could be RSS, and RSS is how podcast is largely distributed, so perhaps the news can be delivered in podcast form.

Jen Austin  21:53  
Yes, good news. I mean, we just yesterday finalized the RSS feeds, and so those are being those are part of the subscription now, people can select that when they check out. They can select RSS feeds for the local news, and so I think anything I always tell the developers or ask them, what about this? Yes, we can do that. We just need time to make it work. So their answer is never no. So we're working on many things, and RSS is now available.

Matt Cundill  22:20  
Yeah, so I think about that. I would love to get something curated that way sent to me in the newsroom, and if I listen and approve it, I could put it out as a podcast. I don't know, I'd be, if I'd be too keen on having the delivery system send it straight to listeners,

Jen Austin  22:36  
right? And that's how we feel too, you know. We want a human at that final, final gate to check it, and then release it to the world, and so that's what we're doing, but yeah, it's definitely possible with you too.

Matt Cundill  22:47  
So you're not going to be accepting any calls unless you actually have people in your newsroom.

Jen Austin  22:51  
Yes, we have a quick story about my grandma too. She, I would always go to school in high school in rural Nebraska, and I would go down to her little farmhouse or creaky wood floor kitchen table, and she'd always had coffee on. And Grandma, what'd you do today? Well, first of all, how was your day? Fine. I had basketball science class. And how was your day? Well, John Henry fell off the tractor, or she always had some sort of community news, you know, where she already, she knew about it before the rest of the town. I have no idea. It was never sourced. My grandma never had a source for any of this information, but small town, you know, word travels quickly, and so I feel like grandma was the first AI ever, because she was so fast with the news, and she's no longer with us. But I think, you know, she was part of what led me into radio, led me into what I'm doing now is just that small town need for news and feeling good about knowing stuff, and so you know, I credit her for that too.

Matt Cundill  23:48  
Well, I love it. Thank you very much for being a part of the show and telling us about this. I'm excited for it. It's a brand new toy, and I know that if I were a program director at a radio station, I just want to take it for a test drive.

Jen Austin  23:58  
Well, thank you. I would love for you to take it for a test drive, you know, and tell us what you think, and, and it is, yeah, it's catching on, and we're really happy about that.

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  24:10  
Another Sound Off Media Company podcast,