UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — New York Times manager for emerging technology projects Amelia Pisapia will be visiting with students and classes in the Penn State Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications and offering a free public lecture about the intersection of media and technology at 6 p.m. Sept. 5 in Carnegie Cinema on the University Park campus.
Pisapia is an editor with over a decade of experience working at the intersection of media and technology. Her work focuses on responsible uses of emerging technologies for journalism. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an advanced certificate in entrepreneurial journalism from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at City University of New York. In 2021, she also completed a master's degree in creative writing from St. Joseph's University New York.
Pisapia has a unique role in the newsroom at the Times, where she partners with different teams around the newsroom to find new ways to use emerging technologies in their work. Prior to her current role, she was a strategist on the Times’s research and development team focused on new applications for artificial intelligence in journalism. In 2018, she was awarded a fellowship at the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism to work on a project called Editors Over Algorithms, which sought to “imagine the future of editing, while also preparing editors and engineers to operate in media environments increasingly touched by artificial intelligence.” As technologies like chatbots and generative AI become more mainstream, Pisapia is interested in helping lead conversations about the history of AI in journalism and how to think critically about its use.
Pisapia will be on campus for two days, during which time she’ll be visiting with classes to discuss multimedia and narrative projects, as well as how students can carve their own path in journalism or fact-based nonfiction storytelling. She’ll also be meeting with faculty to discuss the historical and current uses of AI in newsrooms and her perspective on automation in journalism.