Djordje Padejski: Why AI Literacy Belongs at the Core of Journalism Education

As a new academic year begins, journalism schools face a defining challenge: how to prepare students for a profession being reshaped by AI.

At Stanford University, Djordje Padejski is leading the way. A veteran investigative journalist and now associate director of the John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships at Stanford, he created one of the earliest AI-focused journalism courses at Arizona State University before bringing it to Stanford last year. His classroom is less lecture hall and more lab, where students test AI tools and also learn to examine them.

On Newsroom Robots, Djordje shared how he structures his course and what journalism schools must do to prepare the next generation of journalists.

Key topics include:

• Why journalism education must move beyond teaching AI as just a tool and instead frame it as a socio-technical phenomenon.
• How to embed AI literacy in classrooms by separating hype from reality, contextualizing the history of AI, and examining its cultural and ethical limits.
• Practical strategies Djordje uses to structure his Stanford course, from lab-style experimentation to peer-led discussions that uncover both opportunities and pitfalls of tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and NotebookLM.
• The importance of teaching students not just how to use AI but how to critically assess its strengths, biases, and limitations.
• What a future journalism curriculum or degree built around AI might look like, and how educators across disciplines can prepare the next generation of reporters.

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