Melissa Bell, Aron Pilhofer, Mark Chonofsky & David Chivers: Chicago Public Media on Building AI Tools That Serve the Audience

Jan 27, 2026

Guest

David Chivers

Guest

Melissa Bell, CEO of Chicago Public Media, leads strategy and membership growth. Aron Pilhofer, product leader focused on AI-driven audience and membership features. Mark Chenofsky, Lenfest AI Fellow improving transcription, translation, and archives. David Chivers, Lenfest AI advisor who guided responsible AI adoption. They discuss bringing AI into newsroom workflows, unlocking decades of audio, translation speedups, product choices of build vs buy, and learning from a public AI mistake.

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INSIGHT

AI As A Tool To Reinforce Public Media

Melissa Bell sees AI as a chance not to replace journalism but to amplify public-service missions and avoid repeating past internet-era mistakes.
She emphasizes using AI to help create a well-informed public without sacrificing the humanity of reporting.

INSIGHT

Product-First, Not Content-Generating

Aron Pilhofer frames current AI work as product development and enhancement, not automated content generation.
He stresses guardrails and avoiding using generative AI to produce published content or links.

ANECDOTE

Fast Wins: Translation And Transcription

Mark Chenofsky recounts rapid wins: same-day Spanish translations and transcribing decades of audio archives for searchability.
These projects unlocked discoverability and faster publication for journalists.

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Chicago Public Media operates two distinct news brands: WBEZ, the public radio station, and the Chicago Sun-Times, the legacy newspaper. With audio and print journalism, both membership and advertising revenue, and decades of archives in multiple formats, they're a unique case study for AI in local news.

When CEO Melissa Bell joined the organization, there was interest in AI but no dedicated resources for experimentation. Through the Lenfest AI Collaborative, they brought in their first AI engineer. A year later, Spanish translations that used to take days are now published the same day. Forty years of WBEZ audio, previously unsearchable, are being transcribed and made searchable for journalists.

In this week's episode, host Nikita Roy speaks with Chicago Public Media leaders Melissa Bell (CEO) and Aron Pilhofer (Chief Product and Membership Officer), along with Mark Chonowsky (AI Fellow) and David Chivers (lead AI advisor for the Lenfest AI Collaborative).

A note on this week's episode

David Chivers, who listeners will hear in this episode, passed away on January 1, 2026. He was the lead advisor for the Lenfest AI Collaborative and this episode was recorded the previous month. David was deeply committed to building capability in newsrooms. He was generous with his time, sharp in his insights, and always had one of those big smiles that would light up a room. He will be missed.

The conversation covers how Chicago Public Media is thinking about AI as part of a larger membership strategy, how they decide what to build versus buy with limited resources, and what it looks like to lead through a public AI failure.

In this episode:

02:55 — Where Chicago Public Media started with AI a year ago

08:08 — What AI use looks like inside the newsroom

15:42 — How product development is evolving with AI tools

27:28 — Collaboration with OpenAI and Microsoft

28:26 — How AI fits into Chicago Public Media's membership strategy

36:05 — Build vs. buy with limited resources

37:44 — The Chicago Sun-Times AI-generated book list incident

42:18 — Advice for leaders navigating AI mistakes publicly

This episode of Newsroom Robots is supported by the Lenfest Institute for Journalism.

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