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Friday Deep-Dive
Turn a 2-hour meeting into a story draft in 20 minutes
You didn't get into this business to spend Tuesday night at the council meeting and Wednesday morning typing it up. So this week I went looking for the simplest ways AI can hand you back real hours, not toys, actual time. I found five, and today we go deep on the biggest one: turning a long public meeting into a solid story draft, with the fact-checking built right in so your name is never on a robot's mistake. The exact steps, the exact prompt, and the four other time-savers are below.
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Let AI take the first pass at your next council meeting
The meetings eat a small newsroom's week: two or three hours in the room, then two more turning your notes into a story. AI can take the first pass at both halves. Feed it the meeting transcript (your phone or the posted video will make you one) and it hands back a draft, a list of every motion and vote, and your best quotes, in about a minute. Your job shifts from typing to what you're actually good at: checking the facts and adding the local context a machine will never have. Below is the exact four-step workflow, the prompt to paste, and four more places the same trick saves you hours.
This is the rare AI use that pays off the first time you try it, on work you already have to do this week. But there's a line you can't cross: AI drafts, you verify. A wrong vote or a made-up quote under your byline costs more than the two hours it saved. Do it right and you leave the office earlier without ever gambling the one thing your paper sells, which is trust.
The full how-to, step by step →
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What is?
AI Hallucination
What it is: An AI hallucination is when the tool states something false with total confidence: a quote nobody said, a vote that didn't happen, a source that doesn't exist. It isn't lying; it's a prediction engine filling a gap with the most likely-sounding words, and sometimes the likeliest-sounding answer is simply wrong.
Why publishers care: This is the whole reason you never publish an AI draft without checking it. The tool is a fast first-drafter, not a reporter. It saves you the typing, but the facts are still yours to confirm, and your byline still carries them. The papers that get burned are the ones that forgot the machine can be confidently wrong. The ones that thrive treat AI like a talented intern: fast and helpful, and never published unedited.
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— Trevor
Trevor Slette
Co-founder, Quadd.ai · 28-year community publisher
trevors@quadd.ai
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Book a 15-min call
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LinkedIn
P.S. P.S. Reply “meeting” and I’ll send you the exact prompt from today plus a one-page checklist of what to verify before you hit publish. Keep it by your desk on meeting night.
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Run a newspaper. Use Quadd.
AI tools built for small newsrooms. Document intelligence that turns court reports and box scores into copy you can paste into your layout. Audio transcription that finds the quote without you scrubbing for it. AP-style proofreading that tightens copy without flattening voice. Built by someone who knows what a Tuesday night feels like. Free for seven days.
Request a 7-day trial →
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