One thing will change your journalism career more than any other membership, networking group, or pitching course: AI.

Sorry, but I said what I said.

It’s already changed the newsroom and the publishing landscape. It’s changing what editors need from freelancers and what clients will pay professional writers to do. And it’s going to change how you research, pitch, write, edit, publish, distribute and find stories — whether you like it or not.

Understandably, journalists have a particularly complicated relationship with it. We’re wary of the bollocks. We don’t trust it. We don’t want it making up facts or inventing quotes. And we don’t want to read one more pitch that sounds as if it was written by the same irritating intern.

But being wary of AI and understanding it are two very different things. Come and find out what happens when you stop worrying about AI stealing your job – and start asking it to make you better at it. We’re going to show you how to use AI responsibly as a freelance journalist.

That means using it to:

• interrogate your own ideas — think kill your darlings, but for the AI age

• research like a pro – if you’re not already using it to make sense of data, you’re behind

• think like the most annoying editor you know

• make your pitches stand out in a sea of cringeworthy AI slop

• streamline your workflow – automate the boring bits of your job

It’s time to get under the bonnet of this thing. Show the robots who’s boss.