Data-Informed, Not Data-Driven: Building AI That Serves Reporters – National Press Foundation

Source Domain: nationalpress.org

Ryan Restivo, of YESEO, details the thought process behind creating the successful Slack-based AI tool, placing journalists’ critical thinking and news judgement at the center of his operation.

Program Date: Feb. 9, 2026

At the February 2026 Widening the Pipeline virtual training, Ryan Restivo, creator of the YESEO app, offered a clear message to journalists navigating artificial intelligence: Be skeptical. Be practical. And stay in control.

Restivo, 2022–2023 Reynolds Journalism Institute fellow, launched YESEO in 2023 as a free, Slack-based tool designed to help reporters and editors strengthen headlines and better understand how their stories perform in search. Since then, it has been installed in more than 600 workspaces and used on more than 18,000 stories.

But even while pitching YESEO, Restivo was careful to celebrate his product while also aiming to reframe how journalists think about AI.

“I want to make sure that I’m hammering home the point that this isn’t going to replace anybody doing really valuable reporting,” Restivo said. “Using tools will help you but not replace your reporting. I think it depends on how you use tools in your work.”

Here are other highlights from Restivo’s presentation:

YESEO: Optionality Over Automation

Restivo built YESEO with one guiding principle: give journalists information, not instructions.

Users paste a story into Slack, select their market, and receive analytics about keyword usage and structure. If they want, they can request suggested headlines generated by a large language model. But the model only reads the story if the user opts in.

“The most important thing for me is that the only time that a model would read a story is when a user permits it to do so,” Restivo said. “Nothing else is being produced without their…

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