Here’s why these editorial GPTs work

Before we get started on this week’s newsletter, which is on the most simple but effective GPTs to build in your newsroom, I want to call out a few things:

Heading to Washington State: I am on my way — as we speak — to Seattle to speak at the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association Convention on AI for sales teams and other cool content products you can sell. I will share some photos here next week.

Oklahoma this week: I got to spend some time earlier this week in Tulsa and Oklahoma City visiting with News on 6 and News on 9 on all things digital. Here’s a photo with two of their digital leaders, Richard Cox and Carrie Winchel. And I wanted to call out this great SEO approach their team took after we chatted about why answering reader questions is so important from a search perspective today:

• Who is Lindel Fields? New state superintendent appointed after Ryan Walters resigns
• What is the Oklahoma Turnaround?
• PSO plans Oologaph power expansion: How it will impact your bill

A photo with Griffin’s Richard Cox and Carrie Winchel

Now let’s get on to this week’s newsletter on the most simple, but effective GPTs for newsrooms.

For starters, a GPT is a customizable AI tool that follows your instructions to generate or improve what you’re trying to create. Once set up, it remembers your directions so you don’t have to retype them every time, making the process faster and efficient.

Here are a few for editorial teams that I think are worth building:

1. Community and news briefs

This is such low-hanging fruit and makes all of the sense in the world to use for AI.

If you have a page that runs community briefs, news briefs, or calendar items, a GPT can quickly rewrite press releases and submissions to fit that space, making the whole process much more efficient.

How to do this: Simply add to a document throughout the day or week those submissions and instruct in your GPT the style to follow, length, headline characters and how things like quotes should be handled (since they are meant to be short you may typically not want long quotes).

2. First draft editor

The idea of this GPT is to have a tool that can provide a reporter a first review of their story before it gets to an editor.

We’re seeing more and more publishers experiment with this kind of GPT because it’s helping writers get valuable feedback and in the end deliver a stronger and cleaner story that is actually making the line editing process smoother.

How to do this: Create instructions that ask the GPT to flag grammatical issues, unanswered questions, items to check twice and critical red flags. It’s important to provide as much information about your organization as possible like style guides, standards, localization needs and examples of great stories.

3. Repurposing content

A repurposing GPT takes a full article and turns it into everything you need for distributions: social posts, captions, newsletter blurbs, SEO and a story format, all so your content shows up everywhere without a ton of heavy lifting.

How to do it: Paste in your story along with a reminder of your audience, how you write and style guidelines. Then ask the GPT to create versions for different platforms like a newsletter intro, LinkedIn post, or Instagram caption.

Other Editorial GPTs I Love

• Content Ideation GPT can help when you’re stuck on story ideas or need follow-up ideas
• Newsletter GPT can create short, engaging intros readers will click on
• Workflow GPT can help keep teams on track with tasks and deadlines
• Interview Prep GPT can create customized questions for your sources
• Call-to-Action GPT will help deliver stronger CTAs that drive more click thrus for newsletters

We’d love to help you implement AI

We have an AI program that provides the training, workshops and implementation that help media companies find their way through AI. Download our flyer here and contact me today at david@davidarkinconsulting.com