Southeastern students led an AI journalism workshop at AEJMC in New Orleans

Student editors from Southeastern Louisiana University’s The Lion’s Roar joined communication faculty in leading a hands-on artificial-intelligence workshop at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication conference in New Orleans. One Lion’s Roar account described the session as taking place Aug. 4. The ticketed roundtable divided participants among three journalism and media beats: hard news, sports and name, image and likeness content, and public relations and features. Attendees watched students demonstrate projects they had developed, then either tested the approaches with coaching or discussed the workflow in real time. Chelsea Slack, faculty adviser to Southeastern Student Publications and an AI researcher and author, moderated the pre-conference workshop, “Visualizing the Beat: An AI Prompting Challenge.” The student presenters included Lion’s Roar editors Chase Gispert, Sean Hoffman, Tyra Johnson and Roselyn Rivas, alongside former editor-in-chief Kennith Woods. The session began from the premise that visual presentation is central to reaching young audiences, whose readers may make decisions with their eyes before reading. Its organisers framed the training as workplace preparation, but also as an exercise in responsible newsroom use of emerging technology. Hoffman and Woods led the hard-news group, focusing on newsroom ethics and the circumstances in which AI could be appropriate. They demonstrated breaking-news graphics made with Lion’s Roar photographs, social-media tools, Canva and generative AI. Their central message was that AI should be used lightly and with a human in the loop. The workshop’s demonstrations stressed revising generated drafts by replacing text, correcting layouts, adding original photography and applying brand standards. Slack said those tools were not part of the publication’s day-to-day newsroom work. But she argued that students needed to understand what the tools could and could not do, and when their use was appropriate, if they were to be ready for a changing media workplace. Gispert and Laura DiMattia led the sports and NIL segment, showing how college athletes could use AI-assisted tools to develop personal marketing content. Examples included a post-game graphic following a performance and same-day announcements of deals, reflecting the importance of social-media feeds to athletes’ personal brands and potential earnings. Johnson and Rivas led the public-relations and feature-content work. They showed how AI could support brainstorming and custom design elements, including through AI features incorporated into graphic-design software, while treating a generated draft as a starting point rather than finished work. The workshop took place as employers have increased their demand for AI skills. Southeastern cited the National Association of Colleges and Employers’ spring 2026 Job Outlook update, which found that 35% of entry-level roles required such skills and that demand had more than doubled over the preceding six months. Among employers seeking AI skills, 75% cited the ability to identify and use the appropriate tool for a task, 72.7% effective prompting and 65.9% the ability to analyse and revise AI output. Nearly 58% said they assign AI-tool projects to interns and new hires. The university also cited NACE’s 2026 student survey, in which nearly 70% of graduating undergraduates said AI skills would matter to their careers, while half said they had not developed them. Slack said Student Publications wanted its reporters to become “AI haves, not AI have-nots.” Ethics discussions extended beyond the Southeastern workshop, Hoffman said, with several conference sessions examining the proper use of AI. AEJMC members had adopted a resolution on ethical AI use in research, teaching and professionalism in October 2025. The policy calls for disclosure and transparency about AI tools and assistance, sufficient detail for replication and assessment, and author responsibility for unintended consequences. The students also used the conference to meet representatives of the University of Vermont’s Center for Community News, which named Slack a 2026 Faculty Champion. Her pilot project at Southeastern is intended to create a reporting pathway from writing classes to The Lion’s Roar and, where appropriate, local publications, with student editors helping guide work through publication.