
Rune Ytreberg and Lars Adrian Giske: How iTromsø is Building an AI-Ready Foundation for News
Newsroom RobotsShow Notes
Imagine a newsroom where AI agents assist with reporting, actively surface leads, analyze government data, and help journalists navigate complex investigations in real time. Norway’s iTromsø is laying the groundwork for exactly that.
In the second part of this episode with Rune Ytreberg, head of data journalism at iTromsø, and Lars Adrian Giske, head of AI join host Nikita Roy to share how their small but ambitious newsroom is systematically building an infrastructure for AI-powered journalism. This isn’t just about isolated tools—it’s about creating a cohesive ecosystem where AI enhances reporting at every level.
Rather than simply bolting AI onto existing workflows, iTromsø is focused on building a structured data infrastructure that supports AI agents across multiple newsroom functions.
Their vision includes: A centralized AI-powered data interface that allows journalists to filter, analyze, and cross-reference government records, public documents, and municipal archives. Automated news alerts that notify reporters when AI detects important patterns or anomalies in the data. A structured repository of historical data, ensuring journalists have context-rich information at their fingertips, allowing for deeper investigative work.
This structured approach isn’t just about efficiency—it’s about creating a foundation where AI can play an active role in surfacing critical stories.
iTromsø is designing an AI-ready newsroom—one where structured data, automated insights, and AI-assisted research come together to elevate investigative journalism.
Sign up for the Newsroom Robots newsletter for episode summaries and insights from host Nikita Roy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
More from Newsroom Robots
For most of journalism’s history, the article has been the atomic unit of news: a fixed container, written once and served the same way to everyone. That’s beginning to change. AI is moving out from behind the scenes, where it quietly powered efficiencies, and into the interface itself, where it can assemble, personalize, and adapt the news to each reader.
At The Seattle Times, an AI tool identified a new prospect and helped close additional ad revenue in a single day. The Seattle Times is one of 11 news organizations participating in the Lenfest AI Collaborative and Fellowship Program, funded by OpenAI and Microsoft. Through this initiative, AI engineering fellow Rajesh Barade worked with the advertising team to address their challenges and developed a prospecting agent. This tool enables sales representatives to enter a category or focus area, identify businesses spending in that market, find decision-makers, access advertising spend data, and generate personalized outreach.
For years, the aggregator model was simple: curate the best journalism from thousands of publishers and send audiences their way. Now that contract is being rewritten, and Yahoo News is one of the most interesting places to watch it happen.
AI is settling in as infrastructure within newsrooms, a layer quietly reshaping how journalists discover information, how stories move through production, and how audiences increasingly expect news to reach them.
Most major newsrooms have now moved beyond early experimentation with AI. The main challenge now is determining how to govern effectively, scale consistently, and strategically position AI across the entire organization—while maintaining public trust as a central priority.