Newsman’s Startup Uses AI To Find Stories

Former NBC 10 Boston reporter Eli Rosenberg is leaving television news to launch Your Assignment Desk, an AI-powered startup that scrapes public records and generates local story ideas for newsrooms.

Rosenberg, 47, returned earlier this year from covering the Winter Olympics in Milan and began building the tool as a personal reporting aid. Six months later, he is turning it into a company. The product scans dozens of public sources, then produces a list of possible stories and suggested interview subjects.

Eli Rosenberg

“We’re not looking to replace journalists,” Rosenberg said. “We’re trying to make everyone’s life easier, and use a very powerful tool that the industry is fully embracing day-by-day to help.”

The name nods to the assignment desk, the newsroom hub that compiles potential stories from press releases, phone calls, and police scanners before editors assign them to reporters. Rosenberg, so far the company’s only employee, built the system with Anthropic’s Claude. At its core is what he calls the “truth doctrine”: guardrails requiring that suggestions be grounded in actual records such as police reports, meeting agendas, or court filings. He adopted the rule after early experiments produced AI errors and hallucinations.

“The truth doctrine is that brain,” he said. “It is everything that a journalist needs to know in terms of what makes a good story, what doesn’t, what does this story need to get verified so that it can go on air.”

In a demo for The Boston Globe, sample pitches included a surge of abandoned vehicles in Boston, a State House bill to appoint special police officers in Somerville, and an FAA ground delay at Logan Airport. Rosenberg said none are guaranteed scoops, but the goal is to surface publicly available leads so assignment editors can spend more time chasing tips.

It is unclear how many stations will buy such a product rather than build internal tools or remain wary of AI in reporting. Rosenberg said he has not found a comparable offering and hopes his nearly 22 years as a TV reporter will help shape how local newsrooms use the technology.

He joins a wave of TV journalists who have left local stations in recent years. Local television remains a leading source of local news but faces growing competition from social media, podcasts, and digital outlets. While many former colleagues moved into public relations, politics, or real estate, Rosenberg said he wants to be part of what he sees as the future of news.