Rolli: A Platform by Journalists, for Journalists

Branislava Lovre: Welcome to AImpactful. Today, we will talk about Rolli, a platform for journalists, created by journalists. For the first time ever, we have two guests. Today, we will speak with Rolli’s co-founders Catalina Villegas and Nick Toso.

Nick Toso:: Thank you

Catalina Villegas: Thank you for having us.

Branislava Lovre: Let’s start today’s conversation with the question, how was Rolli created?

Catalina Villegas: I’ve been in newsrooms all my life, from CNN to CBS, NBC, NPR. I’m currently a news anchor here in Los Angeles. And Nick has had a very long career in newsrooms as well.

And what we saw is that, in every newsroom we went to, we experienced really great inefficiencies and challenges that made our job so much harder. The job of journalists, it’s hard enough as it is, and we experienced a lot of small inefficiencies and challenges that made it even more challenging and made getting to that final product, which is so important, which is that that piece of information that informs the public, that informs that community. There were a lot of challenges to get there.

And while we were experiencing that, there were a lot of other outside external factors that were making that process harder. So, the changing of audience consumption in the way that people find and consume news had been changing for some years, especially because of the Internet.

That had created a lot of pressure on more traditional broadcast operations and other stations. And also, what it meant is that a lot of these operations were being forced to slimmed down and reduced newsroom resources. Sometimes that meant layoffs, sometimes that meant reshuffling internal resources.

And so, it created a lot of pressure on the existing journalists that were there to create more content in less time. At the same time, the news cycle was speeding up, is still speeding up. A lot of it because of the Internet and those really big challenges of a sped-up news cycle meant that we had to do two or three times more work in the same amount of time.

While we’re experiencing a lot of these challenges, we thought there must be a better way to do this. There must be a better way for journalists to find incredible subject matter experts that are vetted, that hopefully are diverse and reflect better, the communities that these journalists are covering. And we couldn’t necessarily find something out there that did that. And so we decided to create it ourselves. Now, Nick, do you want to talk about that a little bit?

Nick Toso: Absolutely. So, Rolli is short for Rolodex and the real vision we had and what we saw. And I love documentaries and I love watching news content. And we thought to ourselves, what if we could have documentary level expertize on every local channel in the country? What would that do? And you know what I’m talking about, because when you watch a documentary, you leave that documentary and you leave. You leave that documentary knowing something more and sharing with your friends and family. Some interesting facts that you learned in the documentary. What could that do to society?

Because we’re seeing the growth of news deserts in the U.S., we’re seeing more and more communities being left out with vital information that they need to make their everyday decisions. So that was really the overarching vision for Rolli. And, you know, four years later, almost five years later, we’re well on our way to achieving that mission and we’re very happy with it.

Branislava Lovre: We’ve heard about Catalina’s background, Nick, can you share your story, and explain why is it important for journalists to be company founders?

Nick Toso: I was the bureau chief at CNN en Espanol in Washington, D.C. for many years, covered many elections there, a lot of regional stories as well. I grew up through the ranks, through CNN. So, I started as a as an entry level producer and kind of did every job in the newsroom until becoming the bureau chief. And in that process, I saw a lot of inefficiencies that were really impacting the quality of our content.

It just so happened that the D.C. bureau at the time was coordinating and hosting about 75% of the interviews for the entire network. This is because in D.C. you have a lot of universities, think tanks, ambassadors. And obviously, the election cycle becomes very pertinent when you’re in Washington. And it was through that magnified workflow of finding experts that we really saw. This was this was a big problem and getting worse.

So, we spoke with a lot of friends of ours who worked at stations around the country. They confirmed that it was also a problem for them. Then we started Rolli. And i will flash back a little bit. When I first walked into CNN, and this was now around 2010, I felt like I was at NASA. I mean, we had satellites in the air. There were TV monitors everywhere. It was a global operation.

It really felt like we were at the forefront of technology. And then somewhere along the line, it felt like technology started happening to us as opposed to being the driver for technology. Journalists have always been at the forefront of technology since the invention of the printing press, basically. And we saw that that leadership position a road.

Rolli is very much an attempt to put innovation back into the hands of journalists. It’s an industry that has a ton of creativity and a ton of of of mission and purpose. We think it’s a really important initiative and it’s been really exciting to join you on this podcast to talk to other founders from the industry who are building tools by journalists, for journalists, because journalists have always used other industries, tools for newsgathering will use, a home rental website to do an investigation or rely on other tools that aren’t purpose-built tools.

And it’s very important that the tools that journalists use follow journalistic principles, principles that emphasize accuracy, fairness, transparency, data, privacy, accountability. These are not standards in every other industry. And journalism has a higher standard. So, it’s imperative, especially now in this age of AI, that the technology we use adheres to our code of ethics as journalists.

Branislava Lovre: For those new to Rolli, what can they expect from the platform?

Catalina Villegas: Rolli is essentially a platform that has two sides of it. On one side you have journalists and on the other side you have expert and thought leaders and organizations that are interested in being discovered by journalist and engaging with journalists.

So, if you’re a journalist, you can create an account, you can go to our website, create an account. It’s free as a journalist, and essentially when you enter what you get, is a lot of a suite of tools and resources that will help you speed up that newsgathering process.

Some of those tools, include our vetted database of incredible subject matter experts. These are incredible experts that can speak on a lot of different topics, anything from biology to the economy to the election. Right. And we have a lot of experts in a lot of different locations, but also a lot of that speak different languages.

I used to work at Univision and before it was so hard to find a Spanish speaking expert by deadline. It was something that was a real problem, right. With Rolli, you can essentially type into the system. I want to find a biologist who speaks Spanish and is located in Florida, and you’re essentially going to get an expert who fits that description.

So that’s one of the really great tools that will help journalists speed up that workflow, that we know, according to the Society of Professional Journalists it can take them hours to do something like that.

One of the other tools that we have, on our, on Rolli is an events calendar that’s really helpful, so journalists can keep track of what’s happening in the news cycle. They can find pegs and ideas and things to cover.

And then we have another tool, which is really incredible, and it’s called Information Tracer. And I’m going to let Nick talk about this tool because this is his baby. This is his thing.

Nick Toso: This is a really exciting tool for not just us, but for all journalists and the industry at large. It’s a tool. It’s an award-winning tool for social media intelligence and anomaly detection. And what that essentially means is that we use cutting edge algorithms to scan social media platforms for anomalies that can typically indicate disinformation campaigns.

It so happens with disinformation that they’ll put a piece of content out and then the network in authentically amplify it. Our technology will alert journalists to that inauthentic amplification so that when you see a piece of content online, whether it’s user generated content or a news article from a website that you’ve never heard of before, it’ll tell you if that content is suspicious, it’ll give the journalist a red flag, quite literally, it’ll show you a red flag on the screen, so that you look a little bit deeper into that piece of content before you rebroadcast it to the public.

And it’s a really exciting tool. It’s always growing. It’s thanks to our collaboration with our wonderful partners, at Safe Link Network. We developed the tool in the International Center for Journalists Leep Innovation Lab. So, shout out to them for their wonderful support. And it’s a tool that’s growing every day. Media trainers are including it in the curriculums for students, and we’re very excited to see it grow.

Branislava Lovre: What are the initial reactions from users of the application?

Catalina Villegas: I think this is one of my favorite part of this endeavor of the start up is getting those messages from either expert or journalists who just feel so happy about the interaction that they’ve just had or the interview that they’ve just had because I’ve been out in the field, I’ve been in the newsroom, and I know how crushing it is when we miss a deadline because we can’t find a particular expert or when we really want to dig into a particular topic.

But because we can’t find that person, we have to pivot and cover something else. And then the community doesn’t get that level of in-depth information that we thought was so important. And so, for me, it’s been, it lights up my world any time I get a message from a journalist saying, wow, thank you so much. I just had this really incredible interview with this expert. He was absolutely perfect or she was absolutely perfect for this story, I needed. She really had a lot to say about this topic. And now I’m passing that information on to the community.

Branislava Lovre: How does Rolli use AI, with special emphasis that we are talking about non-generative AI.

Nick Toso: That’s a really important distinction. We hear a lot of generative AI and when newsrooms talk about the perils of AI, they are usually referring to generative AI Rolli does not use any generative AI, in the sense that we don’t create text, we don’t create images, headlines or things like that.

Rolli uses AI in three main ways. The first main way we use AI is for our expert database search. AI allows us to go past simple keywords and into user intent. That does two things. It helps the journalists get the absolute right, best expert. And it also makes sure that the expert is getting the most relevant requests that they can speak to.

Because the problem we’ve seen in the past is that experts are receiving requests that they aren’t exactly experts on, but will feel compelled to speak about it because either the journalist is under a lot of pressure for their deadline or they’re very excited for the opportunity. So, we really want to make sure that the AI is matching experts and journalists in the most logical way.

The second way we use AI is we have an agent, so our journalists can engage with our agent and get very nuanced and very detailed. For example, Catalina was talking earlier about finding for example, Catalina was talking earlier about finding a biology expert in Florida that speaks Spanish. You could actually have a conversation with the AI and say, I need a Spanish speaking biology expert who’s an expert in whale migration patterns and how the decline of the sea algae is forcing them to, you know, find new places to eat and things of that nature. Now, I’m not a biologist. The biologist can tell you the exact relationship there.

But the point is that every interaction that the journalist has with this agent is customized and personalized. And what that means is that no two journalists are going to get the same results. And that way we ensure that the AI is not just recommending the same expert over and over as if they were on the first page of Google. We don’t want that either. We want diversity of thought. We want new voices into the conversation.

The third way we use AI is again with our advanced anomaly detection on social media, which I’ve explained already, but it’s a very exciting use case as well, allowing us to analyze vast amounts of data and save the journalists unquantifiable amounts of time when trying to make sense of the conversations that they’re seeing online.

Branislava Lovre: Can we demonstrate how it works?

Catalina Villegas: So, as I mentioned previously, we have two sides to the platform. On one side, we have the journalists and on the other side we have the experts. I believe Nick is about to pull up essentially what a journalist sees when they come to Rolli and what I think is really powerful about the platform.

Is that one of the challenges that we had in the past before AI is that if there was something new, sometimes was hard for the system to understand what the journalist was looking for. I’ll give you a great example. The Scott Key Bridge collapse in Maryland.

As soon as that happened, we had journalists coming in from a lot of different places and looking for this Scott Key Bridge collapse. But if that hadn’t happened in the past, you wouldn’t have that as a keyword or you wouldn’t have that mentioned in your profile.

And so, a previous system wouldn’t have provided really great results for that. Now, in this situation, the system provides really great results because it understands that the bridge collapse is something that happened, And I think you didn’t say Scott Key, but it’s fine, the system understands that it needs to provide engineers, it needs to provide experts on construction, construction management, civil engineering.

Then the journalists can essentially click into these profiles and learn more, but Nick, I’ll let you take it from here.

Nick Toso: Absolutely. So, with the example of bridge collapse and this was not prepared ahead of time, this is literally on the fly. This is the same experience that a journalist would get when using Rolli at home. You’re going to see our top experts. And it’s not just showing you the top experts, the AI is explaining to you why we believe this is the good expert or one of the good experts for your topic.

You can see here on the bottom that this is an AI explanation. Whenever we use AI in the platform, we label it. And we’re very transparent when you’re seeing AI and when you’re not. And that’s one of the ethical principles of journalism we were referring to earlier. Journalists will always understand when air is being used on the platform.

If you go down to our social media analysis, you’ll actually see that there seems to be a terrible event in India pertaining to their landslides that have led to some bridge collapses. So the social media analysis is showing you increased activity here. I did not know about this is a terrible event and we’ll look into it. But this is how a journalist can use it to discover breaking news or related news around the country.

And then, of course, we have news and events that a journalist can access as well. If you were to go deeper into the expert Rolodex, you could sort by the organization, you could sort by language, you could sort by location.

And once you find the expert. This is a wonderful professor of engineering from Roger Williams University, one of the many amazing organizations on Rolli. You could then see this experts’ contact information, their media, bio qualifications and any other information that they’ve put in their profile.

And the journalist can reach out to that expert directly for the interview. We are not trying to stand in between the journalist and the interview. You don’t need to book the interview on the platform. This becomes your contact. And we hope that the experts from Roger Williams University in this case and the journalists seeking them out can build a really long-lasting relationship and develop them as sources. And that’s the whole point of the platform.

Branislava Lovre: How to create a profile on Rolli?

Nick Toso: You could head to rolliapp.com or to make it easy, rolli.ai that’s our other domain as well. Sign up for your entry level press pass, It’s free for journalists. It’s very easy to use a for journalist. If you can use Google, you can use Rolli. For experts, if you could use LinkedIn, you could use Rolli, we’re not redefining the wheel. These are softwares and technology that are accessible to folks of all ages and all skill levels and we really encourage you to check out free plans, we’d be very happy to serve you and your newsroom.

Branislava Lovre: How does Rolli apply ethical principles, in using AI for journalism?

Nick Toso: When we think about the code of ethics of journalism, we’re talking about accuracy and fairness, transparency, accountability, equity and representation, and essentially a commitment to human rights.

So, by promoting the freedom of expression, where we’re supporting this fundamental right to freedom of expression, by providing journalists with the tools and resources they need to accurately and responsibly report combating disinformation by equipping journalists with an advanced AI tools and a robust database of experts. We help combat this disinformation, which is crucial for an informed public discourse and our democratic societies.

And lastly, we collaborate with various organizations and groups that are committed to human rights and public service journalism. This includes the International Center for Journalists, Public Media Journalists Association, Institute for Nonprofit News and others. And if you fit this description, we’d love to work with you, too. So, if you’re listening to this, please do reach out to us. And we’d love to explore our partnership with organizations that uphold this code of ethics and these benefits to society.

Branislava Lovre: And final question for today, what are your plans and goals for the future?

Nick Toso: There’s so much work to be done in this space. The very exciting thing is that we have a really, really healthy dialog going on with newsrooms, with newsroom leaders, with journalists, and with communications directors at wonderful organizations that are always giving us ideas to iterate upon what we’ve built.

The next thing that we’re looking at is more of a team’s functionality for journalists. So now we have journalists at hundreds of newsrooms around the around the world who are actually looking to collaborate with journalists from their own newsrooms, but within our platform.

We’re building that functionality, so soon if you’re a journalist on Rolli, you’ll be able to invite your, colleagues in your newsroom to collaborate with you on the platform that’s going to help you work more efficiently, make sure you’re not calling the same expert at the same time during breaking news or to make sure you’re collaborating on an a data investigation piece using our information transfer tool.

There’s so much collaboration available on the platform and it’s so important that we as journalists collaborate. Now more than ever, we’re seeing the reduction of newsroom resources, reduction of staff every day. We’re being asked to do more and more with less. And the only way out of this is through increased collaboration in the industry.

So, we hope that really in the future can be a tool for increased collaboration and efficiency as well.

Branislava Lovre: It was a pleasure talking with you.

Catalina Villegas: Thank you.

Nick Toso: Thank you so much for the space, great show. We will keep watching.

Branislava Lovre: You’ve just watched another episode of AImpactful. Thank you, and see you next week.