Great conversation with Austin Wilson of 'The Austin Wilson Show'

Austin Wilson, host of The Austin Wilson Show out of Austin, Texas, asked me a question on our call today that I readily admit that I fumbled in our conversation: "Why do you think you're the only one?"

Boardy connected me with Austin, and I'm grateful he gave me his time. Thank you, Austin. It was wonderful meeting you and being able to discuss the AI scene here in Austin, Texas.

I also need to fix something right now. In an earlier post, I said Austin runs Hack AI. He doesn't do this at all. He knows the folks who do, and he pointed me toward the Hack AI meetup downtown during Austin Tech Week. My mistake, Austin.

Back to his question. He followed it with "what makes you unique that you had this idea that others didn't?" I said I hadn't seen other journalists doing this kind of work. That tells you what I've seen. But, it does not answer what he asked of me at all.

So let me try again.
I'm 62 years old and I've worked in journalism my whole life. I started with a pica pole and a proportion wheel, sizing negatives for print newspapers. Today I write Python, wire up APIs and JSON pipelines, and run everything through GitHub Actions and Vercel. Plenty of journalists have the newsroom years. I've worked with them a whole lot. Plenty of developers have the code. I happen to have both in one person, and GSR Network is what that looks like.

There are six newsrooms plus the Lone Star Report for Texas news. There are NO AI-written stories. Every story links readers back to the original source of that story. Standards? Every single platform carries a standards block built on the Associated Press Stylebook, Chicago Manual of Style, Merriam-Webster's Dictionary and Roget's Thesaurus. And I check every platform every day, by hand. As I told Austin, there's no way in hell I would ever run GSR Network without human hands involved. It will never happen.

Austin said something on the call I wrote down: "AI helps you be more productive, but the folks that are winning with this are the ones that have the experience, the actual subject matter expertise."

Built for journalists by a journalist. That's the answer, Austin.
He also subscribed to the GSR Network Weekly Roundup and the GSR YouTube channel. Appreciate that, sir.