Can GenAI Move from Individual Use to Collaborative Work? Experiences, Challenges, and Opportunities of Integrating GenAI into Collaborative Newsroom Routines

Generative AI (GenAI) is reshaping work, but adoption remains largely individual and experimental rather than integrated into collaborative routines. Whether GenAI can move from individual use to collaborative work is a critical question for future organizations. Journalism offers a compelling site to examine this shift: individual journalists have already been disrupted by GenAI tools; yet newswork is inherently collaborative relying on shared routines and coordinated workflows. We conducted 27 interviews with newsrooms managers, editors, and front-line journalists in China. We found that journalists frequently used GenAI to support daily tasks, but value alignment was safeguarded mainly through individual discretion. At the organizational level, GenAI use remained disconnected from team workflows, hindered by structural barriers and cultural reluctance to share practices. These findings underscore the gap between individual and collective adoption, pointing to the need for accounting for organizational structures, cultural norms, and workflow integration when designing GenAI for collaborative work.