Originally published on Journalift.org
- Name of the media: KosovaPress
- Mentor: Damjan Dano
- Founded in: 1999
- Employees: 30
KosovaPress is Kosovo’s first self-supporting news agency, it originally operated as a source for credible information during a crisis. Over the past 26 years, this media outlet grew into a regional agency providing various multimedia content formats to Albanian speaking population in Kosovo, Albania, North Macedonia and other neighboring areas and diaspora.
The organisation, which moved to new and modern office space in November 2025, includes a journalistic and technical staff of 30+ people. Their revenue comes from a mix of agency model subscribers, advertising, sponsored content and donor-funded development projects.
The initial goal
The initial goal in the project “Beyond Boundaries: Harnessing AI to Connect with Wider Audiences” was to introduce AI into the newsroom and improve daily productivity with operational workflow revisions and improvement, as well as to utilise AI tools to grow audience reach and develop new revenue streams.
The initial ambition of the KosovaPress team in the Thomson Foundation project was to build custom AI systems, but through the mentorship that got redirected to utilization of practical and already available AI tools and integration of such in current workflow. The original vision was ambitious: custom AI systems for content verification, social media optimization, and automated content generation.
But custom AI development is expensive, slow, and requires ongoing technical maintenance. The mentorship pivoted this early toward a more practical approach: instead of building from scratch, integrate existing tools that work today and create workflows journalists can actually use. The decision was made because development of custom AI models and systems is a costly and impractical decision for a newsroom of their size, and given project capacity limits, it was practically impossible to do that. With the proper guidance, the outlet was redirected to use tools that already work and are proven, are affordable and can be adopted fast.
The revised plan targeted tool experimentation scenarios, especially given that the outlet provided content in Albanian language and not every model was fit and well trained on it, and eventually the team landed on these tools: ChatGPT Team for research, Trint for AI transcription, OpenAI API for CMS integration and content adaptation, and Ocoya for social media management. On the platform side, the team would implement SEO optimization, text-to-speech integration, AI-powered newsletter recommendations, and a paraphrased content generator for subscriber clients – which proved to be a great tool and a powerful new revenue stream.
The KosovaPress team had strong editorial experience and a solid reputation, but a bit more traditional workflow. AI was seen by journalists as a threat instead of a productivity tool and improvement. Their management and development team had good instincts on the AI utilisation and was keeping up with the industry trends, as well as eager to improve their existing workflow.
The shift from initial development of systems to integration of existing ones was quickly understood and provided very quick wins for the Kosovapress team. The development team composed an initial list of development tools that they can quickly provide a beta version of and test them in production with editorial members of the news team.
But within this stage, hesitation occurred with the editorial team of usage of such tools, which required better coordination and earlier involvement of all stakeholders in order to develop a proper AI tool that would satisfy the requirements.
In their words
“At first, there was hesitation because the team was used to traditional ways of working, but over time they embraced it, especially audio transcription, which became a necessity for daily operations. Integrating AI into editorial work for headlines and text content was more challenging, considering the traditional way news had been processed up to that point. Over time, however, this also proved necessary for our editors, as higher efficiency was achieved in a shorter amount of time.
As for the ChatGPT program, from the very beginning there was a need and demand for information retrieval, image generation, statistics, content translation, and over time (after internal training in our offices), custom GPTs were developed according to the needs of the staff.
With the introduction of these AI platforms, a new window opened for the adoption of various AI technologies in everyday work.”
– Andi Krasniqi, Junior Developer, KosovaPress
The mentorship perspective
The mentorship provided by Thomson Foundation addressed three core needs. First, support and education on what AI actually is – its capabilities, limitations, and costs, as well as ways to approach its implementation. Many journalists came in skeptical, worried AI would replace them. Others assumed AI could do anything. Management had very high expectations from this news magical thing. All views needed calibration. The development team also needed some guidance on best practices and proper tool implementation, on which instructions they followed up greatly.
Second, a mindset shift at the project management level. KosovaPress initially wanted to develop proprietary AI systems. The mentorship’s first task was demonstrating why that path would fail given the budget, timeline, and available technical resources. Once leadership accepted this, the focus shifted to integration rather than invention. Overall, the main challenge was expectation management. AI has been hyped relentlessly, and some on the team expected magic. The reality is more practical: AI tools require setup, iteration, and human oversight.
Third, hands-on training in the Albanian language provided by Valon Canhasi. All 30 staff members received practical instruction on using the new tools – not as replacements for journalism, but as accelerators. The training tackled fears directly and showed concrete applications that made daily work easier: faster transcription, better headlines, smarter social media scheduling.
“The most valuable takeaway was realizing that the real shift isn’t about adopting tools, but about changing mindsets: moving from traditional ways of working toward embracing AI trends thoughtfully. This mentorship was crucial because it showed us how to navigate this new AI-driven landscape with guidance, ethics, and responsibility, always keeping the audience and human impact at the center of the work.” – Ardiana Bytyci, Project manager at Kosovapress
The implementation
The implementation touched both the newsroom workflow and the client-facing platforms. For daily operations, the team adopted ChatGPT Team for research, SEO optimization and content drafting, Trint for transcribing interviews and press conferences, and Ocoya for scheduling and optimizing social media posts across platforms. On the technical side, the development team integrated OpenAI’s API directly into the CMS through WordPress plugins.
This powers several features: SEO-optimized title and description generation, text-to-speech functionality on articles (later through mentorship changed to be executed on-demand in order to manage API costs, instead of automatically outputted for every produced article), and a paraphrasing tool that generates unique versions of news articles for subscribed clients.
At this stage, Kosovapress entered 2026 with new revenue streams from AI-powered services, a trained team comfortable with AI usage and understanding of its limitations and ethical use, and a valuable experience in AI implementation in daily operational newsroom tasks.
The numbers
- 6 AI tools and features integrated into newsroom and platform workflows.
- 30 staff members trained and actively using AI in daily work.
- Audience engagement up 20%, meeting the project target through stronger SEO, text to speech, and AI supported social media management.
- News production increased by 23.06%, more than double the initial goal, driven by faster research, drafting support, and transcription.
- Subscriber base grew with 73.9% increase YoY, showing that AI enabled services can directly support revenue growth.
- AI ready newsroom
This mentorship process was conducted as a part of the Business Innovation Synergizer programme through the Media Innovation Europe project.
Business Innovation Synergizer is implemented by Thomson Media as a part of Media Innovation Europe led by the Vienna-based International Press Institute (IPI), the consortium brings together Thomson Media (TM), The Fix Foundation (TFF), and the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN). The programme is co-funded by the European Union.
