A local democracy custom-GPT is allowing New Zealand’s Stuff Group to dive into local government affairs and produce fresh, relevant stories.

In an INMA ideas blog, head of life media Sarah Stuart tells how Stuff’s Democracy.AI provides a custom tool to help underserved communities.

“While many media organisations have had to walk away from funding news operations in regional areas, Stuff Group has remained committed,” she says, “and we needed new solutions to ensure local coverage was as comprehensive as possible with sometimes stretched resources.”

A small country, with a population of just over five million, New Zealand still has hundreds of municipal government bodies – many in remote areas. With more than 30 national, regional, and community newspaper mastheads, Stuff Group’s masthead publishing division remains committed to keeping audiences informed about crucial decisions made by elected officials in their own backyard.

Stuart says monitoring local government manually takes significant time and resources – both in increasingly short supply – and generative AI offered a solution.

“We developed a local democracy custom-GPT, giving us the option to deep dive into local government affairs and produce fresh, relevant stories for our widespread readership,” she says. “As one of our news leaders said recently, ‘I’m old enough to remember when email came to our newsrooms; this feels just as transformative.’

“Democracy.AI gives our reporters the ability to scan, prioritise, and report on hyperlocal decision-making documents such as meeting minutes and committee submissions in volume, giving audiences a better picture of what’s happening in their towns.”

The tool reviews source material, selects relevant story ideas, and if required, writes the stories. It gathers information from official papers attached to each request, analyses for relevance and accuracy, and crafts well-written, engaging articles.

Headlines are optimised for search engines, it quotes accurately from the source data provided, and before writing a story, it will ask how many words the story needs to be. “We also gave ourselves extra ears and eyes using AI listening tools to monitor city hall meetings and identify key themes and issues,” she says.

“We ran a two-month pilot of the tool in one of our regional newsrooms to test the viability of the project. Our Waikato Times newspaper and digital masthead has 11 local authorities in its coverage area, so it was the perfect testing ground.”

Stuart says Stuff wanted the tool to be simple, sustainable, effective and well-received by readers. “It was. AI gave the power to participate in the decision-making process of local democracy back to the people.

Waikato Times editor Jonathan MacKenzie was initially sceptical, but has been amazed by the speed at which his reporters can work when assisted by AI. “It’s like having an army of worker bees happily going about their toil, allowing our reporters to focus on more complex and meaningful stories that provide context for readers in their everyday lives,” he says.

“It’s far better for my staff to be out talking to people and digging for stories than stuck behind a desk reading a council agenda. In my experience, the best journalism is done when there’s more time for prospecting in the field, and that’s what AI support affords us.”

Waikato Times’ newsroom used the tool daily, generating significantly more local democracy stories and building a new section on its subscription website called Ratepayers’ Roundup, significantly boosting traffic, engagement and reader satisfaction.

Across the pilot period, the Times increased its story count, and digital subscriptions more than doubled, with local government and Ratepayers’ Roundup content being among the highest conversion drivers. The subscriber net promoter score for the masthead also grew 19 per cent over the pilot period.

“Since the successful pilot, we have rolled the tool out to other regional newsrooms across New Zealand,” says Stuart. “It’s AI for the people, improving the hyperlocal news we publish and giving our journalists more time to explore, write and produce the unique content AI cannot deliver.”

Pictured: The new Waikato Local community newspaper features an AI-driven column called Ratepayers’ Roundup.