The Guild of Corporate Online Publishers (GOCOP) has organised a training session for its members on effectively deploying Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools as part of measures to help them publish faster, better, and more professionally to increase profitability.
Penpushing reports that the training session, was anchored by an Artificial Intelligence (AI) expert and publisher of The Lagos Times, Sulaimon Durojaiye with the title: “The AI-Powered Newsroom: AI and Prompt Engineering for Online Publishing”, which explored how participants can publish faster, better and more profitably in the age of AI.
The trainer defined Artificial Intelligence (AI) as technology that enables computers to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, observing that publishing has changed over time from its yesteryear structure of the newsroom-newspaper-reader.
Penpushing further reports that Durojaiye pointed out that Artificial Intelligence (AI) understand language, recognises patterns, analyses information, generates content, solves problems, makes predictions, assists decision-making, insisting that one does not need to be a programmer to use AI.
The expert listed three Artificial Intelligence (AI) terms every publisher should know, comprising Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI), which creates text, images, audio, video and code, and also listed Large Language Models, which are systems trained on enormous amounts of information that understand and generate human language, such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Copilot.
Penpushing also reports that he noted that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not Google Search Engine, as it finds information for the user, returns links and sources, while you investigate and decide.
The lecturer stated that, generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) works with information, creates, transforms and analyses, but could be wrong many a time, a development that makes it incumbent on the user to verify every piece of information sourced from Artificial Intelligence(AI) so as not to run into trouble.
Penpushing reports that he also took participants through the rudiments of what he described as ‘Enter Prompt Engineering’, which is the art and science of giving AI clear instructions to produce useful results.
The Publisher of The Lagos Times differentiated a Bad Prompt, which might involve a prompt like write a story about the budget, and a Better Prompt, which might just be like asking the Artificial Intelligence (AI) to act as a senior Nigerian newspaper correspondent, who might be required to analyse the supplied budget speech, write a 600-word news story, lead with the most significant development in the budget speech, using the inverted pyramid format in news writing.
Penpushing further reports that he listed the Five-Part Prompt Formula comprising: Role, Task, Context, Requirements and Output, warning that better instructions would produce better results and vice versa.
The lecturer on the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Newsroom, told participants that Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be deployed for both news gathering and research, as it can analyse long speeches and reports, summarise government documents, extract key facts, compare documents, generate interview questions and also identify story angles.
‘Other newsroom and research capabilities of the AI include its ability to analyse datasets, research background information, convert complex materials into plain English and help to investigate, but it is warned that it does not replace investigation itself’, he stated.
‘Other uses of the AI listed include its ability to assist across the publishing workflow comprising news gathering, research interviews, transcription, writing, editing and SEO social newsletter analytics, noting that it is not just one tool, but rather an entire workflow’, Durojaiye said.
Penpushing also reports that he explained that with the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI), one news event can become multiple content products. including news stories, features and explainers, profiles and interviews, opinion drafts, headlines and captions, newsletters, press-release transformation, adding that while AI accelerates production, the journalist remains responsible for facts, context and news judgement.
The journalist disclosed that Artificial Intelligence (AI) could be used for SEO, which underscores the fact that one does not just need to publish, but to get found, noting that it could be used for search-friendly headlines, SEO titles and meta descriptions, keywords and search intent, FAQs, content structures, internal-link suggestions and content clusters, adding that the story isn’t finished when you publish it, but it iswhen the right audience can find it.
Penpushing reports that the training comes on the sidelines of the Guild of Corporate Online Publishers (GOCOP) 10th Annual Conference, held between October 8-9, 2026, at the Radisson Blu Hotel, Government Reservation Area (GRA), Ikeja, Lagos, with the theme: “2027 Elections: Trust, Transparency and Shared Responsibilities”.
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