Southeastern Louisiana University editors from The Lion’s Roar teamed up with two assistant professors of communication and media studies, including its faculty adviser, to lead a hands-on session on AI use in the modern media landscape at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication conference in New Orleans.
Chelsea Slack, faculty adviser to Southeastern’s Student Publications, moderated the pre-conference session titled “Visualizing the Beat: An AI Prompting Challenge.” Slack is also an AI researcher and author.
Joining her on the panel were Laura DiMattia, whose research focuses on name, image and likeness (NIL) in college athletics, and The Lion’s Roar Editors Chase Gispert, Sean Hoffman, Tyra Johnson and Roselyn Rivas, as well as outgoing Editor-in-Chief Kennith Woods.
The session comes as AI skills are increasingly in demand for new graduates. In its spring 2026 Job Outlook update, the National Association of Colleges and Employers reported that 35% of entry-level jobs now require AI skills, with demand more than doubling in the past six months. Among employers seeking those skills, the top three were identifying and using the right AI tool for the task (75%), writing effective prompts (72.7%), and analyzing and revising AI output (65.9%); nearly 58% said they assign interns and new hires projects that use AI tools. In NACE’s 2026 Student Survey, nearly 70% of those graduating from undergrad said AI skills will be important to their careers, yet half said they have not developed those skills.
“These are skills employers are increasingly asking for, and one of our most significant goals at Student Publications is for students to walk out the door job-ready. We want students to understand the nuances of these tools, understand what they can and cannot do, and think critically about when AI use is and is not appropriate, in all contexts,” Slack said. “Ultimately, I want my student reporters to be prepared and to be AI haves, not AI have-nots. The reality is that if they are unprepared, they will be AI have-nots.”
Rather than a traditional panel, the ticketed session ran as a roundtable workshop built around three beats — hard news, sports and NIL, and public relations and features. Attendees chose a group and watched the student editors walk through work they had built, then either tried it themselves with coaching from the team or talked through the process with the students in real time. Slack framed the afternoon with the premise behind the newsroom’s social strategy: for a youth audience, the visual is the story, and readers decide with their eyes before they read a word.
Hoffman and Woods led the hard news group, where the conversation centered on AI ethics in the newsroom and where its use can be appropriate: lightly, and always with a human in the loop.
They demonstrated building breaking news graphics from real photos from The Lion's Roar with in-app social media tools, Canva and generative AI, and the ethics questions that came with each sparked a lively back-and-forth among scholars, working journalists and faculty advisers about where the line sits.
“These are not tools we use day to day in the newsroom, but students have to know they exist, know how they work and know when to reach for them. That is what it takes to navigate the modern media environment and, more importantly, the modern workplace,” Slack said.
The AI ethics conversation was not limited to their table, as Hoffman found it to be a running theme throughout the conference.
“Everyone knows AI can be a touchy subject, and the conference had multiple sessions trying to determine the rightful ethics of using such programs, which, strangely, I enjoyed when most people were open-minded, and I was shown ways artists used it to create artwork while historians used it to teach history,” Hoffman said.
Woods closed out his run as editor-in-chief in May, and leading the hard news table was only part of the draw.
“Getting to speak on a professional panel at AEJMC on student journalism was a tremendous honor, and I’m thankful to Dr. Slack for providing me and others the opportunity. I had a wonderful time in New Orleans. I listened to panels on the nature of political journalism, the ethics of photojournalism and the necessity for journalistic voices in the Global South, among many other worthwhile discussions,” Woods said.
For sports, Gispert and DiMattia demonstrated how student-athletes can use these tools to market themselves in the college sports and NIL landscape. A player who drops a triple-double, for example, can have a post-game graphic built and posted that night, and an athlete who signs a deal can announce it the same day. DiMattia, who is developing NIL courses at Southeastern, tied it to the bigger picture: an athlete’s feed is now part of their income, and most are running it themselves.
Johnson and Rivas, on the PR and feature side, showed how AI can create custom design elements, serve as a brainstorming partner for design ideas and, through the AI tools now built into graphic design programs, help users level up their own skills. Their before-and-after comparisons made the case that the AI draft is only a starting point. The human pass, retyping the text, aligning to a real grid, adding real photography and tightening the palette to brand colors, is what separates a publishable graphic from one that reads as AI at a glance.
Rivas spent the rest of the conference on the other side of the table, picking up techniques from panelists in other fields.
“I’m so thankful to have attended the AEJMC Conference, as it allowed me to not only engage in a panel myself, but also learn from other panelists from various backgrounds. My favorite panelist taught me brand-new skills in animation and graphic design that I didn’t know were even possible. This was an experience that I believe every college student should partake in,” Rivas said.
Johnson, who taught alongside Rivas at the PR and features table, walked away with a different kind of takeaway. Presenting to a room of professors and working professionals as an undergraduate pushed her outside her comfort zone, and she was candid about what that felt like.
“At the AEJMC Conference, I gained valuable insight into the values of other people in journalism. Being exposed to different perspectives from other professionals in newsrooms/journalism careers has made me reflect on my own vision and intentions with this career path,” Johnson noted.
“Presenting to a wider audience as an undergrad student was very intimidating. Being the least educated in the room made me feel nervous and less-than; speaking in front of that many people was something I have never been good at. This experience showed me I still have plenty of work to do and helped me set goals for myself and my career,” she added.
The students also met with representatives of the Center for Community News (CCN) at the University of Vermont, which named Slack a 2026 Faculty Champion earlier this year. Her pilot project builds a pipeline that moves student work from writing classes into The Lion’s Roar and, where appropriate, local publications, with the editors on the panel serving as the ones who shepherd that work to print.
Keturah Green, a former Southeastern instructor, alumni board member, and current doctoral student at Louisiana State University, was also in attendance.
“For students, travel to conferences such as AEJMC brings unparalleled exposure that expands their minds, broadens their network and sharpens their presentation skills in preparation for real-world careers across an array of disciplines within the communication field,” Green said.
