NBC News EVP Janelle Rodriguez Discusses Digital News
Janelle Rodriguez, Executive Vice President and head of NBC News Now, served as the keynote speaker at the International Symposium on Online Journalism in Austin, Texas. During her speech, Rodriguez focused on three main topics: the importance of providing free access to premium journalism, how to reach all demographics in a changing media landscape, and the potential dangers of artificial intelligence (AI).
According to Rodriguez, it is crucial that the public has free access to journalism of high quality and that it is not just reserved for those who can afford to pay. She emphasized that NBC News, under the direction of NBCU News Group Chief Cesar Conde, believes in providing free, high-quality journalism and that the company’s future will be geared toward such an approach. While the company does have some subscription-based products, it plans to focus on free journalism.
Rodriguez also spoke about how NBC News has adapted to new trends in media consumption. She explained that the audience has changed in the sense that there are a lot of different ways to access news and information beyond the traditional three networks. Therefore, it is critical to distribute high-quality journalism everywhere the audience is. NBCNews.com has a robust digital operation, but the company also launched Stay Tuned six years ago, a digital-only program on Snapchat that focused on reaching younger audiences. The company also launched NBC News Now four years ago, which is a streaming network that has seen exponential growth.
As for AI, Rodriguez warned against the potential dangers of its impact on journalism. She warned aspiring young journalists that plagiarism is plagiarism, whether it is taking content from The New York Times and passing it off as one's own or using AI like ChatGPT to produce content. She emphasized that presenting someone else's work as one's own constitutes plagiarism.
The International Symposium on Online Journalism is an annual two-day program hosted by the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas at UT-Austin that brings together journalists, media executives, and scholars from all over the world.
