AI in Canadian newsrooms: what do newsrooms in Canada expect from new hires regarding AI literacy? 

What j-schools need to know: Old-school reporting skills are very much in demand, but it helps to experiment with AI tools

By Jessica Patterson and Terra Tailleur 

Part 2

Cabin Radio in Yellowknife hires a few reporters every summer, or what it calls “front-line” journalists, to cover communities throughout the Northwest Territories. The term “AI” doesn’t appear in any job ad. This is deliberate.

“I’d be worried that people would misinterpret that and that I want them to be using the AI to help do the journalism,” says editor Ollie Williams.

“Brevity of thought and clarity of thought are two of our strongest assets that we have as human beings who do journalism for a living, and I don’t want that to be delegated down to an artificial intelligence as a bit of a safety net while we do other things.”

AI is certainly on his radar, but Cabin Radio is not hiring specifically for AI skills in the newsroom. This cautious approach is common in Canadian newsrooms, where traditional journalism skills remain the focus in hiring, and AI is viewed as a supportive tool. 

We looked at job postings on the websites of the 12 organizations we spoke to, as well as journalism-specific sites like Jeff Gaulin’s Job Board, a popular site for journalists. The terms “artificial intelligence,” “AI,” “ChatGPT” and “prompt writing” don’t appear in job ads for editorial positions.

Gaulin himself confirms that he is just beginning to see job ads with artificial intelligence in the post. He says of the roughly 14,000 jobs posted on his site in the last 21 years, there were eight that mentioned AI. Of those eight, only two inquired about the use of AI. The other six focused on covering AI as a topic. 

“It is starting to come in the job postings,” he wrote in an email. “It is moving quickly, even in the corporate workplace. Suddenly the intern is the smartest person in the room if they know how to use Copilot, Grok, Claude etc.”  

In fields from marketing to software development, job postings routinely list AI skills as requirements or assets. Demand for AI literacy is increasing, with employers asking for candidates who can integrate AI tools for tasks like analytics, workflow and content production. At the moment, Canadian journalism organizations are taking a different approach.

Newsrooms in Canada don’t list AI skills in job ads

Newsroom editors point to three reasons: concerns about the signal it would send both within their organization and externally to audiences, the priority they place on fundamental journalism skills and their approaches to managing AI adoption internally.

Newsroom leaders say old-school reporting skills matter. The AI tools can be taught – when needed and in a controlled environment.

Nicole MacIntyre, editor-in-chief of the Toronto Star, considers AI experience an asset. “More importantly, we’re looking for people who are willing to evolve, ask good questions and remain committed to journalism’s mission,” she said in an email.

At The Eastern Graphic on Prince Edward Island, Publisher Paul MacNeill treats AI knowledge as a bonus rather than a baseline requirement. A job applicant might expect a question related to technology, but extensive training isn’t required.

“I would give maybe extra points to anyone who can have a conversation with me about what they know and how they know it and maybe some of the fun they’ve had playing around with it,” says MacNeill.

The Globe and Mail doesn’t expect journalists to come in as AI experts. It’s exploring enterprise accounts for NotebookLM, where it can control who has access to it, says Melissa Stasiuk, head of newsroom development. Interested employees must ask for permission first. 

“If people come in and have ideas on (AI) and they want to share their knowledge and they want to teach us how they’re using it, and if it’s within our policy, then that’s great. But it certainly is not something that we are looking for in terms of who we’re hiring,” says Stasiuk.

“What we’re looking for are the fundamental principles of good journalism. Are you curious? Do you have good ideas? We are primarily written word, so, are you a strong writer? Can you write clearly?” 

Lauren Kaljur, managing editor at Discourse Community Publishing, looks for the same qualities and skills. Discourse is a B.C.-based publisher of six small news outlets. 

“I think given where we are at with the use of AI at this stage, it wouldn’t be something that we would expect in any hire,” says Kaljur. “Time management and efficiency is super key because we have one reporter per community, so there’s a lot of expectations or requirements in order to turn around the story requirement for each week, alongside newsletters, alongside getting out into the community and interviewing.”

Several news organizations are building training programs to ensure journalists develop AI literacy on the job. 

Any journalist who works for Great West Media in Alberta can expect to be trained on the Villager content management system, which has built-in AI tools. “New hires and staffers alike can and are expected to use them,” says Brian Bachynski, president of Great West Publishing.

Earlier this year, the Investigative Journalism Foundation hired an experienced data journalist with AI skills to cover Ottawa, even though AI wasn’t in the job posting. 

“We have reporters who use AI all the time and who do data journalism all the time,” says Zane Schwartz, the IJF’s chief executive officer. “I think that people can sometimes get bogged down in questions like, ‘Is AI mandatory?’ We try to create a culture where people want to use AI because it allows them to do better reporting. We’re happy to hire people who don’t have skills with it and train them.”

The CBC is aiming to train every employee, from summer new hires to 30-year veterans, on artificial intelligence by year’s end, says Rignam Wangkhang, the broadcaster’s adviser on AI projects. The CBC developed a full-day program adapted from Radio-Canada, which has trained over 400 staff members. The sessions cover AI fundamentals, prompt engineering and ethical risks, with hands-on experience using tools like NotebookLM. 

Sessions fill up quickly, says Wangkhang. “I think we’re all learning together actively, and I really want to foster that environment of learning, sharing, experimentation and collaboration.”

Wanted: Old-school skills

A recent survey of 400 journalists in Canada and other countries, “Generative AI and the Journalism Profession: Good or Bad News?,  found that younger and less experienced journalists were more dependent on generative AI and less concerned about ethics. The research suggests that journalists who haven’t yet developed core skills may be using AI differently than experienced journalists, relying on it for tasks like determining story angles, rather than using it to enhance already-solid judgment. This finding points to a potential divergence, with experienced journalists using AI as a tool to do more ambitious work, and less experienced journalists using it to compensate for skills they haven’t fully developed. 

Industry leaders are adamant that traditional journalism skills are still needed, in demand and that technology cannot replace these skills that define quality, original journalism.

“The next generation will absolutely need to embrace the tools that can help them work smarter and more efficiently,” says the Star’s MacIntyre, “but their success will still depend on having the core skills to adapt in a fast-changing media environment: curiosity, critical thinking, strong judgment, and a commitment to truth.”

Stasiuk with the Globe and Mail echoes that.

“It’s more important than ever that journalism schools are teaching the basic fundamentals of how to find good stories, how to interview people, how to build sources, how to edit, how to write great headlines,” says Stasiuk. “I hope that journalism schools do not stray too far from that, towards the shiny object that is AI.”

Andrea Baillie, editor-in-chief at The Canadian Press, says younger journalists bring new skills. Still, she worries that essential reporting skills that once developed organically in newsrooms, like new hires overhearing how veteran journalists conduct phone interviews or deal with reluctant sources, are eroding.

“I hear a lot about people sending emails or reaching out to someone on social media, and I just don’t want to lose that skill of picking up the phone and talking to people in person and being aggressive and trying again,” she says.

Interviewing is definitely a required skill, says Jimmy Thomson, editor-in-chief of Canada’s National Observer. “I think critical thinking is more important now than ever. I think interviewing is the one thing that we definitely can’t outsource yet to ChatGPT, so that one maybe has gotten even more important in this era.”

Schwartz emphasizes critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Any junior reporter applying for a job at the IJF should be prepared to explain their work, not just show strong clips. They might even be asked how they got a tight-lipped source to talk.

“I want them to explain to me how they think about a problem really deeply. Can they do it succinctly and comprehensively? We’ll do little writing tests. We’ll have them screen share and solve basic coding problems and solve basic prompt engineering problems. But all I’m looking for is an ability to creatively problem solve,” he says.

Winnipeg Free Press Editor Paul Samyn recognizes that journalism programs have to make choices on what they teach their students. In his newsroom, new journalists with advanced AI skills aren’t wanted if they can’t meet “the meat and potatoes requirements.”

“In some cases, it’s remarkable how little experience they have had doing news stories. For some of them, a feature story is well beyond their capacity,” says Samyn. “If AI is something that’s being added to the curriculum, there’s only so much bandwidth within the curriculum. What else is going to fall by the wayside?”

It’s inevitable that the next generation of journalists will have experience using AI tools. Already, 73 per cent of Canadians aged 18 to 34 have used these tools, according to a Leger report from May. Another survey, the State of Generative AI Use in Canada 2025: Exploring Public Attitudes and Adoption Trends, found that among early adopters, 91 per cent of 18-to-24-year-olds have used generative AI tools for study purposes.

If news consumers themselves use AI tools, will they accept this in a newsroom? According to The State of Generative AI Use in Canada 2025, some Canadians believe news organizations often use generative AI in their work, to write a whole article (43 per cent) or to edit for spelling and grammar (57 per cent). What’s more, 27 per cent say they are comfortable with getting local news mostly produced by generative AI. 

Job Concerns

All of this comes at a moment when Canadian journalism continues to face economic pressure, devastated by decades of layoffs and newsroom closures. 

According to a 2024 UBC report,  while generative AI created new opportunities for newsrooms to automate time-consuming tasks, it simultaneously threatened journalism’s viability through potential job displacement and the erosion of editorial quality.

Gaulin, who has been running his job board for 21 years, says he’s seen a 50 per cent decline year over year in postings. He expects “explosive growth” to come in AI next year.

“Yes, there is a changing media landscape,” he says. “But, AI is also a significant factor as it replaces or rationalizes the number of journalists in the newsroom. It will be like using the internet or the cellphone – if you don’t, you are unemployable.”

As director of media for Unifor, Canada’s largest private-sector union, Randy Kitt has been fielding questions from anxious media workers about AI for months. The concern isn’t academic, it’s existential.

“They fear the technology could become the next justification for more layoffs amid already barebones newsrooms,” Kitt.

Without firm guardrails, he says, newsroom managers might treat AI-driven productivity gains as an excuse for further layoffs rather than reinvestment in journalism jobs. He encourages media workers to embrace new technology, realize its potential and understand it, so they can help design these guardrails.

“Humans have to be guardrails,” Kitt says. “AI does not replace human judgment.”

Some Unifor collective agreements have begun to include protective language. Kitt provides one example: “This news outlet recognizes that its value comes from original content its journalists produce, and will not use generative AI technology that replaces the creation or production of original content for the duration of this agreement.”

This fall, Unifor and partnering media organizations launched Fact Checked, a campaign designed to remind news consumers that verification is part of a reporter’s process, and that includes talking to people and bearing witness.

For many newsroom leaders, the focus remains on what makes journalism distinct: human skills, creativity and connection that technology can’t replicate.

MacNeill says the value of The Eastern Graphic is its connection to the community, and he needs reporters for that. 

“Reporters who are stenographers aren’t really reporters, are they? So focus on giving your reporters the best opportunity to do the most interesting content week in and week out,” he says.

In the N.W.T., a journalist at Cabin Radio needs to be ready to fly out the door to conduct an interview, gather audio, take photos, and otherwise interact with the people they’re reporting for. 

“The number one skill in the industry, as far as I’m concerned, is trust and authenticity,” says Williams. “If (reporters) know their way around Claude at the same time, that’s great. It’s probably an asset. But I don’t think we can start to lose sight of what the job is really about, and the job is about connection.”

*Disclaimer: This piece was not AI-generated. Any errors are wholly human-made.

AI was used for transcription of interviews, as used by many of the organizations mentioned in these stories.