Rui Barros, Data Journalist, PUBLICO
Workshop Title: AI Agents: License to Do Journalism

Rui Barros is a data journalist at PÚBLICO, Portugal, where he works on data-driven investigations and interactive storytelling. His work includes cross-border investigative projects examining government accountability and political financing across Europe, collaborating with international newsrooms to make complex data accessible to broad
audiences.

Rui teaches data journalism and web development at Universidade Lusófona and leads workshops at conferences across Europe, focusing on emerging approaches that combine traditional investigative rigor with new technical possibilities—from interactive narratives to AI-assisted research workflows. His work has been recognized with Sigma Awards nominations and the Data Journalism Award from the Portuguese Statistical Society.

WORKSHOP TITLE: AI Agents: License to Do Journalism
Learn to build sophisticated AI agents that handle complex investigative research, cross-reference datasets automatically, and fact-check claims in real-time. This hands-on workshop introduces six proven agent architectures—Prompt Chaining, Routing, Parallelization, and Orchestrator-Workers—that solve real newsroom challenges.

Participants will build practical “AI recipes” to extract and verify statistics from documents, cross-reference claims across databases, route breaking news intelligently, and orchestrate fact-checking workflows with human oversight. Each pattern includes working code, ethical considerations, and integration strategies for existing newsroom tools.

No advanced programming required—just curiosity about how AI can augment journalistic judgment and rigor.