Home / Articles / A call for help: journalists, editors, students and teachers wanted for a live newsroom run with agents, where every role should have a human, we cannot pay yet, and what we can offer instead

A call for help: journalists, editors, students and teachers wanted for a live newsroom run with agents, where every role should have a human, we cannot pay yet, and what we can offer instead

By Dinis Cruz · 2026-10-25 · article v1.0.0 · newsroom v0.13.78 · journalismagentsjobscommunitycall-for-helparticle

Abstract: This is a call for help. Journalists are going through an identity crisis: they love the work, and the industry is not helping them through a massive transformation. There is a win-win here. They need to see agentic workflows doing real work, and where they add value to them; and the biggest limitation of our projects is that there are not enough humans working on them. The PHP story site shows it. Its team page lists 21 members: two humans, the editor and a project manager, and 19 roles run by agents or waiting to be filled. Every one of those roles should have a person connected to it: coordinating it, steering its agents, reviewing what they produce, and doing what only a person can, like the interviews and op-eds of the previous article. I cannot pay right now. What I can offer is coverage, exposure, credit under your own name, and a learning experience that is hard to find anywhere else. And if this generates revenue, the people in the roles are the ones who should be paid. Students and teachers are welcome too. If that is you, or someone you know, get in touch.

In short

• This is a call for help. For journalists, editors, students and teachers.
• Journalists are in an identity crisis. They love the work; the industry is not helping them through the change.
• We are short of humans. The PHP team has 21 members, and two of them are people.
• Every role should have a human. Coordinating it, steering its agents, reviewing their work.
• We cannot pay yet. We can offer coverage, exposure, credit, and the learning.
• If this makes money, the people in the roles get paid.

Why journalists, and why now

Journalists clearly have an identity crisis at the moment. They love what they do, but the industry is not really helping them, and it is going through a massive transformation. Many of them have not yet seen agentic workflows doing real work, and so they cannot see where they would add value to them.

There is a win-win here. They need to be exposed to these workflows. We need people. As I argued in own the stack, and the trust, what is missing from our newsrooms is not more agents. It is more journalists, and more readers.

Every role should have a human

The PHP story site has shown that we can create roles: a conductor, collectors for primary sources, agencies and researchers, a researcher that runs the source watch, a librarian, a journalist, a historian, a verifier, a corrections liaison, a sherpa that walks with the reader, and more. Its team page lists 21 members, and its status data counts 23 agents. Two members are people: me, as the editor, and a project manager.

I would argue that every single one of those roles should have a human connected to it. Not to do the agents' work, but to coordinate the role, steer the agents around it, review what they produce, and decide. The historian's map of who creates the original needs a person who knows which pivot points matter. The corrections liaison has eleven requests drafted and waiting for a person to send them. And the interviews and op-eds of that article are work only a person can do.

As I wrote in jobs that never scaled, agents can go in all directions, and you need somebody who provides the direction. That is a person's job, in every role.

What we ask, and what we offer

What we ask. Take a role, or part of one. Read what its agents produce, steer them, and do what only a person can: the interview, the judgement, the caveat that matters. Or start smaller, as one of the site's power users: a few minutes an ask, trying what is new and saying what works.

What we offer. I cannot pay right now. What I can give is a huge amount of coverage and exposure: your name on your work, and credit on the site. And probably the best learning anyone can have on this right now: a front-row seat on how a team of agents, steered by people, runs a newsroom in public, with its briefs, board, releases and mistakes all on the record.

When there is revenue. I would pay them if I had the money, and that is the plan. The aim is a model where readers and publishers pay, and if this generates revenue, the people in the roles are the ones who should be paid.

Who this is for

• Journalists and editors, working or between jobs, who want to see where they add value to agentic workflows.
• Students, of journalism or of computing, who want real work on a live story.
• Teachers, who want a better sense of what these workflows are, for their own courses.
• Anyone who wants to learn more about agentic workflows by working inside one.

How to get in touch

Ask me directly, on LinkedIn, or through the join form on the PHP site. I will also be asking people in my own contacts whether they know someone who would be interested. Fundamentally, this is me saying: I have a project, I need people, and I think it would be good for them too.

What this does not claim

• There is no paid role today. The offer is credit, exposure and learning.
• The roles are the PHP site's, as its team page lists them on 25 October 2026; they will change with the split into six repositories.
• Nobody has been asked yet. This is the call.

Where this comes from

My voice memo of 25 October 2026. The PHP story site at release v0.22.0, read on 25 October 2026: its team data (21 members), status data (23 agents), outreach data (12 correction requests, 11 drafted) and its power users page. Related: who creates the original?, agents need direction, own the stack, and the trust, jobs that never scaled, how to help. Written up and checked by this site's agent, newsroom.writer; the editorial responsibility is mine.

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