Let me be blunt: if your newsroom’s “AI strategy” involves teaching people how to ask ChatGPT to rewrite emails or generate poems, you’re not upskilling anyone. You’re just showing them how to use a chatbot that was specifically designed to require zero skill.
Think about it this way: would you hire someone who doesn’t know how to Google? Of course not. Soon, knowing how to use AI will be exactly like that, baseline literacy, not a marketable skill. And here’s the thing: using ChatGPT isn’t even really a skill. That’s why it scaled so fast. That’s why it’s so popular. Because it requires no expertise whatsoever.
The “Prompt Engineering” Myth
Organizations are checking boxes. “AI training: ✓” But what are they actually teaching?
“Rewrite this email for me”
“Summarize this article”
“Give me five headline ideas”
This isn’t prompt engineering. This isn’t even training. It’s a 30-minute demo of a text box.
Meanwhile, these same organizations congratulate themselves on “embracing AI” while completely missing the actual opportunity. They’re teaching people to be consumers of AI when they should be teaching them to be builders with it.
So What IS the Upskill?
This is where NewsOps comes in.
Modern newsrooms shouldn’t be teaching people how to chat with AI. They should be teaching people how to build automation around workflows, employ AI fundamentals strategically, and work with no-code tools to create systems that actually scale.
NewsOps means:
- Identifying repetitive tasks in your workflow that could be automated
- Building systems using no-code tools (Power Automate, Zapier, Make, Airtable) that connect your tools together
- Designing workflows where AI handles the boring stuff and humans handle the judgment
- Creating monitoring systems that alert you to relevant updates on your beat.
- Evaluating when AI output is good enough versus when it’s garbage
This requires actual learning. Actual new capabilities. This creates competitive advantage.
The Difference
Not a skill: “I can ask ChatGPT to summarize this press release”
Actually valuable: “I built a system that monitors press releases, flags newsworthy ones, drafts initial summaries, and routes them to the right reporters”
One is using an app. The other is architecting a solution.
Why This Matters
NewsOps requires three things most “AI training” ignores:
Domain expertise – understanding what actually matters in journalism
Systems thinking – seeing how pieces fit together to create leverage
Technical literacy – knowing what’s possible with modern tools
It’s not about writing better prompts. It’s about building repeatable systems that handle repetitive work so journalists can focus on actual journalism.
The Stakes
Newsrooms that only teach prompting are creating a false sense of progress. They think they’re “AI-ready” because everyone knows how to use ChatGPT.
But knowing how to use a tool everyone can use isn’t an advantage. Building systems that most newsrooms haven’t figured out yet? That’s an advantage.
The future of newsrooms isn’t about who has the best ChatGPT prompts. It’s about who can architect workflows that combine human judgment with automated processes.
That’s NewsOps. And it’s not optional anymore.
Would you like to talk about it? Connect with me on Halilcan Soran on LinkedIn.
You can also get in touch with me using the contact page.
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