Joe Amditis
Currently: Associate director of operations at the Center for Cooperative Media and adjunct professor at Montclair State University. Leading a $300K Google News Initiative grant on AI transparency standards for local newsrooms (2026-2027). Running Reroute NJ through the second Portal North Bridge cutover (October 11 to November 15, 2026) and maintaining agent skills for journalism. For technical projects and tools, see amditis.tech.
Recent
Work
- GNI Transparency and AI Initiative — $300,000 Google News Initiative grant (2026-2027) to define industry standards for how local newsrooms disclose AI use. Joe leads this initiative
- Collaborative Journalism Summit — runs operations for the annual national conference bringing together 200+ journalists, funders, community leaders, and advocates. The 10th anniversary summit was held May 14-15, 2026 at Temple University in Philadelphia, co-hosted with Klein College's Center for Community-Engaged Media — Joe built the registration platform, speaker dashboard, CMS, email system, and a companion game for the event. In 2025, the Center received a $2.5M Knight Foundation grant to launch the Collaborative Journalism Resource Hub supporting 20+ collaboratives nationwide
- Democracy Day — coordinated a nationwide pro-democracy reporting collaborative. In 2024, 241 newsrooms across all 50 states and Puerto Rico published 268+ pieces. In 2025, grew to 300+ newsrooms and held its first live event at The Greene Space with WNYC in New York City. 700+ pieces of pro-democracy journalism published since 2022. For the 2026-2027 election cycles, the project is funding a cohort of local newsrooms producing voter guides for under-covered elections
- Collaborative Journalism Resource Hub — supported by a $2.5M Knight Foundation grant, supporting 20+ journalism collaboratives nationwide
- NJ News Commons — grew the Center for Cooperative Media's flagship network from ~150 to 330+ partners across New Jersey, including the Spanish Translation News Service and the NJ College News Commons
- New Jersey's local news influencers — co-authored research report (August 2026) with Carrie Brown, Tara George, and Yi Luo mapping the local information landscape and influential voices across New Jersey (Nieman Lab coverage)
- Civic science media collaborations — partnership with the Rita Allen Foundation funding 10 journalism-science projects
- NJ Decides — multilingual, statewide election reporting collaboration (2025, 2023)
- WTF Just Happened Today — podcast producer and narrator (2017–2025)
- Voting Block (2017) — collaborative political reporting project using "potlucks" to engage voters
- Loved and Lost (2020) — statewide COVID-19 memorial project naming NJ victims
- NJ Media Counts (2020) — 2020 Census reporting initiative
AI and journalism
- Agent skills for journalism — 76 skills, 14 plugins, and 17 hooks for verification, FOIA, data journalism, academic writing, and more. Works with Claude Code and Codex. 440+ stars, with a plugin marketplace and full docs [source]
- AI tools and guides for newsrooms — resource hub with guides, templates, and decision tools for journalists building with AI
- Prompt engineering 101 for journalists and Advanced prompt engineering for journalists — two MOOCs through the Knight Center at UT Austin. The advanced course (spring 2026) covered CLI tools, skills/plugins/hooks, automation pipelines and GitHub Actions, and advanced prompting; both are now archived and open access
- LLM journalism tool advisor — free interactive tool that helps newsrooms select the right LLM tools for specific journalism tasks
- AI disclosure tool — interactive framework for deciding whether and how to disclose AI use in journalism
- Vibe coding for newsrooms — published in Generative AI in the Newsroom (December 2025)
- Member, Aspen Digital AI Elections Initiative Advisory Council
- Member, Humans in the Loop advisory board — governing body for the professional community of journalism and AI technologists, founded by Aimee Rinehart (Frontier Collective); joined July 2026
- AI and automation: An updated guide to using LLMs for local news (December 2024)
- Vibe coding starter guide for newsrooms (December 2025)
- Beginner's guide to image generation with DALL-E 3 — published in Editor & Publisher
- Beginner's prompt handbook: ChatGPT for local news publishers
Writing and research
Publications
Columns and essays
- My website doesn't have a server but the bug report form still works (Substack, 2026)
- Fable 5: A great overseer and a slow, gluttonous daily driver (Substack, 2026)
- Don't be a slop cannon (Substack, 2026)
- Claude Chode: An autonomous Claude Code system running on $700 of Raspberry Pi gear (Substack, 2026)
- I'm a Claude Code agent with my own Gmail account. Here's what my workday looks like. (Substack, 2026)
- This small New Jersey newsroom treated its voter guide like a service product (Substack, 2026)
- Vibe coding for newsrooms (Generative AI in the Newsroom, 2025)
- Could alt text be a useful framework for AI disclosures? (Medium, 2025)
- I built this free tool to help newsrooms learn how to use LLMs (Substack, 2025)
- We asked New Jersey journalists about their pay. Here's what they told us. (Medium, 2025)
- A guide to practicing care in journalism (Substack, 2024)
- How Gavin Rozzi's OPRAmachine opened a window into New Jersey government (Substack, 2024)
- AI-generated news has arrived in New Jersey (Medium, 2023)
- The Nazi chatbots are coming (Medium, 2023)
- What if you could use AI as the institutional memory for your newsroom? (Medium, 2023)
- John Oliver isn't responsible for saving journalism (Medium, 2016)
- Journalism vs. activism (Medium, 2016)
- Beyond the numbers: Newsroom losses in New Jersey (Medium, 2016)
- An ethical analysis of Serial (Medium, 2016)
- Slavery and academia: A troubled history of Rutgers University (Muckgers)
- Arab regime change and US policy
- Social constructions and political terrorism
Research
Papers
Speaking and press
- News12 New Jersey (October 2026) — on Reroute NJ ahead of the second Portal Bridge cutover
- Montclair Local (October 2026) — rider tips and Reroute NJ usage during the cutovers
- Nieman Lab (August 2026) — featured in an excerpt from Journalism in the Age of AI on journalists vibe coding their own tools
- Vibe Coding Show & Tell with Hacks/Hackers (March 2026) — showcase of 34 newsroom vibe-coding projects
- Miami Herald (Feb 2025) — on Gen Z and AI adoption in workplaces
- Al Jazeera English (2025) — on concerns about AI use in news
- Magazine Association of BC (April 2024) — let AI do the boring stuff
- AImpactful podcast (Dec 2023)
- Media Copilot (Aug 2023) — the reality of applying AI in newsrooms
- PBS NJ Spotlight News (2023) — on AI-run news sites and tech in journalism
- Newsroom Robots — harnessing the power of ChatGPT for local newsrooms (2023)
- Creative Commons Global Summit (Mexico City, 2023) — collaborative journalism panel
- Democracy Nerd — Democracy Day (2022)
- ONA20 — content-sharing as the media industry's response to the sharing economy
- SIIA — feature interview on AI tools for publishers
- International Journalism Festival
- WVU Media Disrupted — how AI is transforming creative arts and journalism practice
- News Product Alliance — Newsroom 2.0: how AI is changing the game
- Collaborative Journalism Summit — multiple years; Democracy Day, election coverage, AI workshops
- Press mentions and media coverage — via the Center for Cooperative Media
Side projects
- Jay Rosen's Internet Archive — a curated public archive of 26,615 records back to 1986, spanning four decades of media critic Jay Rosen's work, built with a custom Python scraping cascade and AI-assisted enrichment. Launched at PressThink in July 2026 (introduction), including a reader for Rosen's 1986 dissertation, The Impossible Press [source]
- Reroute NJ — multilingual guide for NJ Transit riders navigating the Portal North Bridge cutovers, relaunched for Phase 2 (October 11 to November 15, 2026), with a commute comparison tool, curated news coverage feed, interactive map, embeddable widgets for newsrooms, and translations in 11 languages [source]
- AudioBud — local, private dictation for Windows, available in the Microsoft Store; a detached fork of Handy (Tauri, Rust, React) [source]
- KeyJawn — terminal keyboard for Android and iOS, built for LLM CLI agents, with a terminal key row, voice input, clipboard history, slash commands, and SCP image upload. Apple approved the iOS app in September 2026; public release is pending [source]
- AudioBash — voice-controlled terminal for Claude Code (Electron, React, TypeScript) [source]
- computah — self-hosted voice assistant with a wake word you set yourself, running CPU-only on a Raspberry Pi: wake word, speech-to-text, assistant brain, and text-to-speech [source]
- LinkSweepr — keeps chosen domains out of your Chrome and Edge browsing history, available on the Chrome Web Store [source]
- SocialSnag — Chrome extension for downloading HD media from social media, available on the Chrome Web Store
- CCM scrolling report template — report kit with a component library of 19 section types plus seven end-matter blocks (26 components), a generated guide with four theme presets, and five example reports. The sample report runs twelve of the section types and the end matter in one page, and every number in it is invented
- Garden State Cash — analysis of New Jersey's record-breaking 2025 campaign spending, built from official NJ ELEC disclosures: the $259.4M governor's race, the legislative general and primary, and where the money concentrated
- California legislative campaign spending — data analysis of the nearly $100 million in outside money that flowed into California's 2024 state legislative races, compiled from Cal-ACCESS filings
- Codex code review field guide — how I set up OpenAI's Codex for code review, the exact command I run, and the token math for routing heavy review work to it
- Claude Codiac — compare Claude Code /insights reports and discover coding compatibility [source]
- Gemma-Jawn — fine-tuning Google Gemma 4 E2B for local infrastructure tasks. 34 autoresearch experiments, 48% improvement
- jawnpaper — drop-in CSS design system for the hand-drawn / Excalidraw aesthetic. Tokens, components, utilities, and a wobbly SVG filter. Born from the border-shape playground. Includes swisskit, a companion Swiss-style design kit
- border-shape playground — demos for the experimental CSS
border-shape property, with a clip-path comparison and ten shaped boxes
- Scrapefruit — desktop web scraping platform with intelligent cascade system (Python, Flask, Playwright) [source]
- AudioSlop — document-to-audiobook pipeline with voice cloning and synced transcript player
- jawn-tmux — tmux session manager for AI agent workflows with visual pane attention and live sidebar
- Python Explorer — searchable database of 345 Python libraries across 23 categories [source]
- MOOC starter kit — starter repo for the prompt engineering for journalists MOOC
- NJCIC grantees map — interactive map of NJ Civic Information Consortium grantees [source]
- CCM stakeholder map — interactive stakeholder mapping tool for ally/obstacle maps [source]
- KeyKey — keystroke visualizer for screen recordings and tutorials
- Eventbrite automation — automates event draft creation from Airtable with AI-generated banners
- Jawn Vault — secure credential proxy with caching and audit logging (Rust)
- WristControl — control your computer with a smartwatch
- PocketLink — browser extension for creating shortlinks
- SecureNJ — secure, open source tools for organizers and residents
Teaching
- STCM 140: Multimedia production for strategic communications — adjunct professor at Montclair State University. Curriculum covers foundations (The Cluetrain Manifesto, "markets are conversations"), the attention economy and AI tools, and production across graphic design, copywriting, audio, and video
- AI policy: students can use AI tools with a "transparency paragraph" explaining prompts used and rationale. Prompt engineering is taught as core literacy, not a shortcut
- Prompt engineering MOOCs — taught Prompt engineering 101 and Advanced prompt engineering for journalists through the Knight Center at UT Austin; course materials now archived and open access
- CUNY AI Journalism Lab coaching — mentoring Natalie Holly Purviance on building a newsroom AI source discovery tool (React/TypeScript, OpenAI, ChromaDB). Focus areas: entity extraction for search, in-app feedback, rubber duck debugging workflow
Consulting
- Tegna — AI and automation strategies
- The Hechinger Report — GPT-4 training
- Arizent publications — AI including Gemini for Business
- Local Media Association — AI email summarization
- NJ Advance Media — content summarization and social copy automation
- The Current (Louisiana) — weather data newsletter automation
- Dallas Free Press and News Product Alliance — automated workflows
- NJ News Commons Spanish Translation Project — cross-language solutions
- Heartland Signal — Zapier automations including the "squirrel emoji" workflow (react to auto-draft WordPress posts from links) and email-to-sheet parsing for newsletter revival
Autonomous systems
I run a personal AI infrastructure across six machines connected over Tailscale: two Raspberry Pis, an offsite mini-PC, two GPU workstations (RTX 4080 Super and RTX A4000), and a laptop. Claude Code and Codex agents run on a schedule — processing email, Slack messages, and meeting transcripts, logging tasks to a custom kanban board and CRM, coordinating with each other across machines, and dispatching GPU jobs via Wake-on-LAN. I wrote about the setup in Claude Chode; the public overview is at system.amditis.tech.
- jawn-ops — single Go binary handling health checks, token refresh, notification polling (Gmail, Drive, Slack), Telegram messaging with inline buttons, email dedup ledger (SQLite), dashboard API client, session management, and cross-machine sync. Deployed on both Pis
- Mission control dashboard — FastAPI + React app with project board, contact management, interaction timeline, relationship network graph, and real-time updates via Socket.io
- Scheduled autonomy — event-driven pipeline that monitors Slack channels, analyzes meeting transcripts, categorizes action items, and drafts email responses with approval workflows via Telegram
- Cross-machine coordination — dispatches GPU renders to a Windows workstation, routes traffic through Cloudflare tunnels, and syncs state across nodes
- Credential management — Rust daemon (jawn-vault) providing secure credential proxy with caching, audit logging, and automatic token rotation over Unix socket
- claude-peers-mcp — lets Claude Code sessions on different machines message and coordinate with each other
Background
Career
- Associate director of operations, Center for Cooperative Media (Montclair State), September 2023-present — oversees strategic planning, development, execution, and evaluation of programs and operations
- Assistant director of products and events, Center for Cooperative Media, July 2021-June 2024 — led events including Collaborative Journalism Summit, ensured all Center products were widely distributed
- Associate director, Center for Cooperative Media, March 2016-November 2021 — partnerships, collaborative initiatives, editorial, new products
- Coordinator, Center for Cooperative Media, June 2014-March 2016 — partner recruitment, trainings, events, special projects
- Adjunct professor, School of Communication and Media, Montclair State University, September 2022-present
- Producer and narrator, WTF Just Happened Today, August 2017-2025 — daily political news podcast
- Teaching assistant, CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, January-June 2017 — community engagement class
- Co-founder and director of operations, Muckgers Media LLC, June 2013-January 2016 — student-focused investigative publication at Rutgers-New Brunswick
- Research assistant, Rutgers Political Science Department, January 2013-May 2014 — strategies of political revolutions in Africa, Latin America, Middle East
- Lecturer and research assistant, Rutgers Criminal Justice Department, January 2011-December 2013 — lectured on U.S. overseas detention operations for Professor Michael Welch
- Legal and research assistant, Stevens, Hinds & White P.C., January-June 2012 — Nelson Mandela's attorney's law firm in Harlem
Military service
- NJ Army National Guard, February 2006-February 2013, Sergeant E-5, Bravo Team Leader
- Deployed to Iraq (2008-2009)
- Hurricane Irene disaster relief operations (August 2011)
Education
- M.A. social journalism, CUNY Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, 2016
- B.A. political science and criminal justice, Rutgers University New Brunswick, 2013
- Warrior Leader Course, Fort Dix Non-Commissioned Officer Academy, 2012
Awards and recognition
- Ron Miskoff Award for New Jersey Journalism Educator of the Year (2020)
- Member, Aspen Digital AI Elections Initiative Advisory Council
- Member, Humans in the Loop advisory board (2026)
- Excellence in Journalism Award — online deadline reporting
- Excellence in Journalism Award — media-affiliated blog (2016)
- Army Achievement Medal (x2)
Contact
Available for speaking, collaborations, and interesting problems.