A case study that documents how a specific newsroom used AI to conduct an investigation — including the tools, the workflow, the challenges, and the outcomes — is one of the most valuable forms of journalism research. It is immediately practical (other newsrooms can replicate the approach), formally citable (it describes a specific documented case), and highly sought by journalism academics studying AI adoption in practice.
The Case Study Structure That Gets Cited
A citable journalism AI case study includes: Context: the newsroom, its size, and its prior AI experience. Challenge: the specific editorial problem the AI was used to solve. Methodology: the exact tools used, prompts applied, and workflow followed, with enough detail for replication. Results: quantified outcomes (time saved, claims verified, errors found) with comparison to baseline. Limitations: what didn't work, what the AI couldn't do, where human intervention was required. Conclusions: transferable lessons for other newsrooms. This structure mirrors academic case study methodology, making the case study directly citable in academic papers.
Getting Your Case Study Cited
Publish as a blog post with a downloadable PDF for academic archiving. Submit to SSRN and ResearchGate. Email to academics who have published on AI in journalism. Send to INMA, Reuters Institute, and journalism school research centres. The downloadable PDF is critical: academic researchers need a stable, referenceable format for citation.