As artificial intelligence transforms media at breakneck speed, David Arkin of David Arkin Consulting has a clear message for publishers: use AI as an assistant, not a replacement.

In a recent Local Media Association webinar, Arkin — a former GateHouse Media content chief and now a digital and content consultant — was joined by Tara Jones, who heads up branded content for his consultancy. Jones brings years of experience from managing regional newsrooms and now helps clients implement AI tools across storytelling, branded content and SEO.

Together, they laid out dozens of practical ways media organizations can use AI right now across editorial, sales, design and audience development — with a strong emphasis on transparency, efficiency and experimentation.

Editorial strategy: From brainstorm to blurb

Instead of using AI to write full articles, Arkin and Jones recommend deploying it for idea generation, structural edits and rewriting for tone or audience.

“Using AI to do some story angles, headlines, interview questions… helps creative thinking,” Jones said.

Some practical applications include:

  • Plugging in past articles to generate fresh follow-ups
  • Creating SEO-friendly meta descriptions and keywords
  • Rewriting content for different audiences (e.g., family-friendly tone)

Jones also uses AI to quickly generate e-blast or social media copy variations from the same source content: “We needed to create three separate unique e-blasts… AI was definitely very helpful to help us find different angles.”

Her advice: treat AI like you would a press release. “You wouldn’t copy and paste it and put that in the newspaper,” she said. “Use that and craft an actual story.”

Design and presentation

AI’s utility doesn’t stop at the written word. Tools like Canva Magic Studio, Adobe Firefly and Midjourney help generate graphics, social templates, and even magazine cover concepts.

“Design a magazine layout for recurring open house spotlight — room for five images, captions and quotes” was one prompt Arkin used to demonstrate layout generation. While the results often require human refinement, they’re helpful for brainstorming.

Transparency remains key: “If you built something using [AI]… explain how you actually used it and why,” Arkin said, especially for things like photo usage, illustrations, data visualization and videos.

Prospecting and audience development

AI can be a powerful sales and audience growth tool. Arkin recommends using:

  • Apollo.io for identifying and contacting local advertisers
  • Perplexity.ai for research (e.g., “Find Stevie Nicks’ manager contact info”)
  • Otter and Summarize.tech to transcribe or summarize city meetings or Zoom calls for internal use or follow-up reporting

“If you’re using a free version of a tool,” Arkin cautioned, “your content could end up in training data.”

He recommends paid versions of ChatGPT and other platforms for internal work.

Final Word

“If you’re not learning and experimenting with AI,” Arkin said, “someone else is — and they’re going to figure it out.”

His message to local media teams: don’t wait. Use AI to make your journalism faster, cleaner, and more personalized — while keeping your values and audience trust front and center.

The webinar recording is available here: AI strategies that go beyond ChatGPT (Passcode: 1H*uGkWN)

Previous webinars:

Editor’s note: Artificial Intelligence was used to transcribe and create an initial summary of this article, which was then edited by LMA staff.