How to be a shoe-leather reporter in the age of AI

Here are two quick examples to remind us of the lasting importance of shoe-leather reporting­, named for the practice of pounding the pavement for a story so often that it wears down the soles of your shoes.

The first is Jen Psaki’s recent interview on MSNOW with legendary reporter Bob Woodward, who along with Carl Bernstein broke the Watergate story that brought down President Richard Nixon in 1974. He’s written more than 20 books, including “War,” which was published in 2024, and he’s publishing a memoir in 2026.

When Psaki asked Woodward to give advice to young reporters today, he described his recent pursuit of a U.S. general who wouldn’t return his phone calls, reply to emails or respond to requests via intermediaries asking for an interview.

Getting nowhere, Woodward decided to go to the general’s home one night and knock on the door. To his surprise, the general answered. He looked at Woodward and said, “You! Are you still doing this s—?” And then, the general waved him inside for a chat.

Bob Woodward is 83.

“Knock on doors,” he told Psaki. “People want to talk.”

The second reminder comes from a Miller Lite commercial. A guy stands at one end of a bar, exchanging friendly glances with a woman chatting with her friends before he looks down at his phone. The camera pulls back and reveals the actor Christopher Walken, who says, “Don’t just like somebody on the app. Like them in real life. She likes you. Say hello.”

Walken slides over two pints of the best-looking Miller Lite you’ll never see.

Very effective, even with the questionable choice in beer.

Here’s the point: Direct, face-to-face reporting and news gathering remains a great way to get to the essence of a story. But it doesn’t mean you have to choose that approach over using the tools of AI. Instead, use them both for what each does best.

Your AI agent can dig up background, compile statistics and analyze data more efficiently and faster than you, especially if you give it the proper direction. But humans still do some tasks better, write the authors of a new book, “Open to Work: How to Get Ahead in the Age of AI.”

Ryan Roslansky and Aneesh Raman, LinkedIn’s CEO and chief economic opportunity officer, respectively, focus on what they call the “5 Cs” of human capability: curiosity, courage, creativity, compassion and communication.

“This is why AI represents such a profound opportunity,” the authors write. “AI can process information at lightning speed, but it cannot experience the slow burn of curiosity, especially as a shared endeavor with others. It can optimize existing solutions efficiently, but it cannot feel the frustration that sparks entirely new approaches. It can simulate conversation, but it cannot create authentic connections where breakthrough ideas emerge because a meaningful relationship has taken root.”

We have five tips to help communicators strike the right balance between AI efficiency and human interactions.  

1. Try stuff. “AI can process patterns,” Roslansky and Raman write. “Only humans ask, ‘What if we tried something completely different?’” Communicators are often told to just “do it the way we’ve always done it.” AI makes that easier than ever.

Here’s the problem: Audiences turn away from boring content they’ve seen many times before. “Trying stuff” is a very human quality, and one that often produces something memorable. Take a different approach. Find another way to tell the story. Hint: Brainstorming with other humans works wonders.

2. Research first, then get creative. Everyone’s pressed for time. Reporters used to prep for interviews by “pulling the clips,” which meant going into the media library to read or watch what’s been done before. AI is just like that, only better. You can ask AI to summarize the available content on your topic and deliver it to you with astonishing speed.

Just be careful. Researchers now refer to “jagged intelligence,” which The New York Times describes as “the strange way that AI looks like a genius at one moment and dense in another.”

Cade Matz has covered the AI beat for more than 15 years, longer than I would have guessed an AI beat even existed. He writes that AI systems “can write emails, answer questions, riff on almost any topic and generate computer code.”

“But because AI systems reproduce the patterns they find in digital data, they are not good at planning ahead, generating new ideas or tackling tasks they have not seen before,” he writes.

3. Make good choices. My colleague Tom Corfman and I recently attended a masterclass put on by Appspace, a workplace communication platform. One of the speakers had a good rule of thumb for using AI agents: “AI where it works. Humans where it matters.”

And when it comes to conveying emotion, such as compassion, humans definitely matter. As Roslansky and Raman write, “AI can simulate concern. Only humans feel it and can express it.”

4. Don’t get lazy. Reporters who rely too much on AI can undermine their own confidence in considering alternatives and thinking more creatively, according to a recent survey published by the American Psychological Association in the journal Technology, Mind, and Behavior. 

“The potential long-term risks aren’t that AI makes people less intelligent but that some users may become less engaged in the deeper cognitive work that produces novel thinking,” writes study author Sarah Baldeo, a PhD candidate in AI and neuroscience at Middlesex University in England. “That is why the distinction between AI assistance and overreliance is so important.”

5. Use the hybrid workplace to your advantage. While some employers are demanding a return to a fully in-person office, the three-days-a-week hybrid model seems to be on the rise — at least for now.

Employees still complain they can be just as productive, if not more so, by working from home. Many ask, “Why should I go into the office to get on a Teams call?” 

But being in the office is also a great way to do some shoe-leather reporting.

Some communicators experience what we like to call the “60 Minutes Syndrome” when reporting inside their organizations. Their sources, who also happen to be their colleagues, turn skittish or even paranoid when asked to give up any information.

It’s weird, as if the ghost of Mike Wallace is asking the questions, looking for that “gotcha” moment.

First sign of trouble: when your subject matter expert says, “This is off the record,” especially when your question is something like, “Can you give me your full title?”

It’s much harder for a source to blow you off or give you a jargon-filled email response when you’re sitting in a room together.

Walk around, knock on doors. Take it from Christopher Walken. Go say hello. The beer is optional.

At one time in his life, Jim Ylisela did so much shoe-leather reporting that his high-tops turned into low-tops. He’s co-founder and partner at Ragan Consulting Group. Want to learn more about our Build Better Writers program? Email Tom Corfman to set up a free call with Jim.

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