We have nearly two months to go in 2025, but taking last week off gave me time to think about 2026 and what our newsroom can do in the coming new year to further serve this community.
As I’ve written often, 2025 has been the year of artificial intelligence for us. We believe AI will revolutionize newsrooms as nothing before, so we started the year intent on getting ahead of the curve. Ten months later, we have assimilated many AI tools into our work, making for cleaner copy, richer reporting, and many more stories.
We also started 2025 knowing that we’d spend a good bit of time reporting on the impacts of Donald Trump’s second term as president. He vowed to make big changes to government, and he did, with consequences throughout our state and region. Our reporters have devoted countless hours to exploring those ramifications.
With AI and Trump dominating the year, we didn’t schedule specific investigative projects. We still did plenty — on the Browns stadium proposal in Brook Park, the property-tax crisis, education funding, and other issues — but we didn’t set an investigative agenda because we knew our resources would be stretched.
In 2026, we’ll keep covering Trump’s policies, property taxes, the stadium, and AI — but we also want to get back to setting our own agenda. That’s why next year, we’re giving our reporters something rare in today’s breakneck news cycle: time to think.
Reporters in our newsroom work at a breathtaking pace, with all the elements that go with newsgathering these days. Reporting. Writing. Headlines. Photos. Video. Audio. Social media. Next year, we’re giving them a chance to clear their heads and spend two weeks focused on a single topic, of their choosing.
We’re accepting proposals from them for projects they can complete in two weeks that either have a good chance of changing a bad policy or shed light on something where change is needed. As the proposals come in, we’ll schedule them, and then the reporters can go to town, free of all other duties for two weeks. We figure that with AI tools in their arsenal, they can get done in two weeks what would have taken four or more just five years ago.
We’re not limiting them to their beats, and this is open to all. One of our NFL writers, for example, might have an idea for a news side project they’d like to attack, and that’s fine by us.
We serve you, however, so we also want to solicit ideas from readers. I can’t guarantee we’ll get to all of them, but we can easily circulate them to see if any reporters want to work on them. That brings me to the main purpose of this column, inviting your ideas.
The thousands of people who read this column each week are a tremendous set of eyes and ears on this state and community. What have you been seeing that troubles you? Do you know of a public policy in need of change? Do you know of a problem that needs a solution?
This newsroom exists to serve you — and often, the best story ideas start with you. If something’s bothering you, if you see waste or unfairness or opportunity, tell us. Please write up a paragraph or two and send it to me. I’ll make sure the newsroom sees it. I’m making the call out now, well ahead of the new year, so we can get a jump come January.
I look forward to whatever you wish to offer.
I’m at [email protected]
Thanks for reading.
If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.
