AI Innovator Collaborative – September 2026: An AI-Powered Trends System That Finds Stories Before the Audience Does

AI Innovator Collaborative – September 2026: An AI-Powered Trends System That Finds Stories Before the Audience Does is a virtual professional development session on Zoom, Tuesday, September 8, 2026, 3:00–4:00 PM EDT, in the monthly gathering for ONA members experimenting with AI. Zack Zerndt, Search Product Director leading search and SEO strategy at USA TODAY Co., will explain his team’s automated Google trends alerts delivering search-driven story opportunities to editors in Microsoft Teams: unlike post-publication SEO tools, it shifted story selection from reactive optimization to proactive audience-alignment, yielding meaningful traffic increases; he’ll cover automation, editorial judgment and low-cost, low-barrier adoption in newsrooms of any size. Open to Collaborative members: ONA members join free via the listing’s steps, then refresh to reveal Register Now beneath the date/time; upcoming monthly meetings and sign-ups are on each meeting’s event page.

Hosted with: Psychedelic Writers Guild