Every newsroom I work with starts the same way: A C-level team books a workshop. Editors get a half-day training. Sales colleagues receive an external course. Six months later, the question on the table is always the same: “Why did so little of this stick?”

The honest answer is uncomfortable. Training alone, internal or external, does not anchor AI in a media organisation. It only opens the door.

What walks through that door, and stays, is decided by something else: AI champions inside your own house.

Why training is necessary but insufficient

Workshops matter. They build vocabulary, lower fear, expose teams to tools, and create a shared baseline. Without them, no transformation gets off the ground.

But the moment the trainer leaves, the room is full of questions no slide can answer:

• Which prompt actually works for our morning newsletter?
• Are we allowed to use this tool with subscriber data?
• Who do I ask when ChatGPT gives me nonsense at 4:00 p.m., 30 minutes before the deadline?

If nobody is responsible for these answers, AI stays a curiosity. Tools are tested, dropped, forgotten. Three months later, leadership wonders why the investment did not move the metrics.

The training did its job. The organisation did not.

What an AI champion actually is

AI champions are not found in your IT department. They are not external consultants. They are journalists, editors, product managers, sales people, and marketers who get the time, mandate, and recognition to translate AI from theory into daily practice inside their own teams.

A good champion is closer to a peer than to a teacher. They know the workflows. They speak the language of their colleagues. They make AI feel local, not corporate. And, critically, they stay when the consultants leave.

A four-step path to anchor AI sustainably

Building this layer is not complicated, but it requires discipline. Here is a path that works across newsrooms of any size:

1. Identify; do not appoint.

Look for people who are already experimenting with AI in their own time. Curiosity beats hierarchy. A healthy ratio is one champion per 15 to 25 colleagues, spread across editorial, product, sales, and operations.

2. Give them real time, not just a title.

A champion needs at least 10% to 20% of their working hours protected for AI work. Without protected time, the role collapses into unpaid overtime within four weeks, and your best people quietly resign from it.

3. Build a champions network.

Champions need each other. A monthly 60-minute exchange, a shared internal channel, and direct access to leadership creates compounding learning. Isolated champions burn out, but connected champions accelerate.

4. Anchor the role in governance and recognition.

Champions belong in the organisational chart, in performance reviews, and at the AI strategy table. If the role exists informally, it dies informally. Make it visible, make it count, and make it a career step.

Formats that create rhythm

Champions need rituals, not one-off events. The newsrooms where AI actually moves are the ones that put it on the calendar.

A few formats that consistently work include:

• An AI lunch (monthly for 60 minutes). The champions invite the whole company. Two or three colleagues present a real use case from their own work, with real prompts, real time saved, and real failures. Low barrier, high signal.
• An AI breakfast (bi-weekly for 30 minutes). This is a smaller, looser format over coffee. Champions and curious colleagues swap what they tried last week. No slides, no agenda.
• Mini hackathons (quarterly for half a day). Mixed teams of editors, developers, product professionals, and sales people build something usable in four to eight hours. Rough prototypes shift mindsets faster than any keynote.
• Office hours (weekly for 30 minutes). The champion blocks a slot for drop-in questions. An asynchronous equivalent works too. For example, a dedicated channel where any colleague can post a prompt or a problem and get a useful reply within 24 hours is a possible solution.
• Internal AI newsletter (weekly as a five-minute read). One tool, one prompt, one lesson, and one warning. This should be curated by the champions, asynchronous, and scales across locations and time zones.

The format itself is not the point. Repetition is. Champions work because they show up every week, not because they give a great keynote once a year. Repetition turns curiosity into habit, and habit into culture.

Insight for leadership

One note for leadership: Do not try to mandate this. The champions who carry these formats are the ones who already want to. Intrinsic motivation is the only fuel that holds long term. Your job is to make sure their motivation meets time, recognition, and a budget for the croissants.

Training and champions are not alternatives. They are sequence.

Workshops create competence. Champions create continuity. External experts can open the conversation. Only people inside your house can keep it going through reorganisations, leadership changes, and the next wave of tools nobody has heard of yet.

The media organisations that will quietly outperform the rest in the next three years are not the ones with the biggest AI budget. They are the ones that invested in five to 15 of their own people, gave them time, and trusted them to carry the change.

That is how AI gets anchored in a newsroom. Not by a vendor, but by your own team.

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