How The Oglethorpe Echo boosts newsroom with AI

Through collaboration between the Oglethorpe Echo and YESEO, a Slack-based AI tool is enhancing newsroom efficiency and strengthening local journalism

By Amanda Bright and Ryan Restivo

Ryan Restivo, founder of YESEO, works with the staff of The Oglethorpe Echo in Georgia (United States) in their newsroom on April 17, 2025. Restivo asked for feedback on certain aspects of the AI-driven, Slack-based app as well as what reporters would like to have the tool do to increase newsroom efficiency in the future.

There are meaningful ways to create newsroom efficiencies with AI that specifically support small, local newsrooms and news-academic partnerships.

That’s what we’ve learned, as the assistant editor for The Oglethorpe Echo (Georgia, USA) and the developer of YESEO, through the JournalismAI Innovation Challenge, supported by the Google News Initiative, so far.

YESEO, as a Slack-based app that integrates AI and Google Trends, had already proven to be exceedingly useful as it allowed reporters to plumb the depths of engagement through headlines and keywords. Yet as we’ve expanded the app’s functionality, we’ve learned from our newsroom that AI-created social media and newsletter content can have too many emojis; that reporters and editors want suggested headlines quickly, but not with colons; and that even young people can be suspicious of the role of AI in the newsroom, similar to the sentiment in many newsrooms across the United States. 

Through this feedback and grant, YESEO founder Ryan Restivo has been able to create tailored applications with a direct impact on the speed of what’s accomplished in the newsroom each day. Even more vital, we’ve improved the thoroughness and efficiency of understanding the communities we serve, especially with constant staff churn.

YESEO now creates, with just the copy/paste of an article or any set of text, ideas for social media messaging, newsletter content, a three-point summary, URL keywords and push notifications. It gives our staff an excellent starting place and more ideas for engaging our audience. 

This is a report a user received running a story into YESEO and getting its first-round analysis of key terms, possible keywords, suggested headlines, social messaging text and possible push notifications.

A more recent addition is a button that creates a handful of follow-up story ideas based on the article provided. Many of the options confirm reporters’ existing thoughts on future stories but they typically find at least one that is novel or thought-provoking enough to become a new pitch. 

Some of the expanded features of YESEO The Echo accesses includes a three-points summary, URL keyword suggestions, newsletter ideas and — our reporters’ favorite — follow-up story ideas, which are all generated from the submitted story.

The follow-up story idea function of YESEO has allowed The Oglethorpe Echo reporters to think more specifically and deeply about their beats, sources and ways to expand and improve their pitches.

Needs of news-academic partnerships

These uses have been very successful, especially as Ryan has created small revisions through iterative feedback from users. However, it was this quote from our early surveys and conversations, led by Echo assistant editor Amanda Bright, that drove the next part of our innovation.

“My ‘pain point’ is sometimes just struggling to find the time to go out to Oglethorpe County and overall reporting for a county that you don't live in can be troubling at times,” one spring 2025 reporter said. “It takes a while to familiarise yourself with the beat and the central parts of the county it affects.”

During Restivo’s visit to The Echo newsroom in April 2025, reporters engaged in a larger conversation about successes and “pain points” regarding YESEO. From the discussion, several new uses, including an AI-driven database of sources, was proposed.

In a newsroom like The Echo’s, which is a news-academic partnership between a small, nonprofit rural newspaper (and its eight digital products) and the University of Georgia, students make up the reporting staff — and those students change every four months. This is not unlike local news in the United States in general, where turnover is frequent due to lower wages, challenging working conditions and where in 2023, an average of 2.5 newspapers closed each week, according to a report from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. 

This is now driving the expansion of YESEO into its own dataset that will allow reporters to get “up to speed” on their beats, key people and the audience The Echo serves in a comprehensive way. 

YESEO, driven by AI, has, above, allowed for a new level of reflection around sourcing for The Echo with an analysis of the sources most used in the last six months. Then, YESEO creates an a robust understanding of individual sources and how they’ve been used.

YESEO, driven by AI, has, above, allowed for a new level of reflection around sourcing for The Echo with an analysis of the sources most used in the last six months. Then, YESEO creates an a robust understanding of individual sources and how they’ve been used.

Reporters can now get suggested sources for stories; look up the key quotes, previous reporting and general positions/ideas of those sources on issues; check for source diversity; and generally understand the people, topics and events of Oglethorpe County in a quick and easy-to-access Slack response.

When Ryan visited The Echo class in April, we reviewed how knowledge of relationships between sources in a small, local newsroom is vital. The newspaper front page that day had a photo of Judith Paul, who happens to be the mother of one of the most cited sources in the county, county chairman Jay Paul. Yet, the reporter didn’t know this until much later in the reporting process. This new feature will allow reporters to better understand the Echo’s key sources before ever speaking to them, and allow them to build on previously explored topics or think through new story angles for their beats. 

This concept is one we will continue to build out and test throughout the summer. Then, we hope to tackle our reach goal of local style feedback on submitted stories to accelerate the editing process. Regardless, we’ve been able to build a replicable model, through the use of YESEO with The Oglethorpe Echo, of how AI can greatly improve newsroom processes in an ethical way. Our reporters and editors are saving valuable time both in the processing and production of reporting for our community but also with onboarding our staff in a way that allows them to cover the county faster and with more context.

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This article is part of a series providing updates from 35 grantees on the JournalismAI Innovation Challenge, supported by the Google News Initiative. Click here to read other articles from our grantees.