Declining newspaper revenues prompt local newsrooms to adopt automation to maintain efficiency and keep the community informed. However, current research provides a limited understanding of how local journalists work with digital data and which newsroom processes would benefit most from AI-supported (data) reporting. To bridge this gap, we conducted 21 semi-structured interviews with local journalists in Germany. Our study investigates how local journalists use data and AI (RQ1); the challenges they encounter when interacting with data and AI (RQ2); and the self-perceived opportunities of AI-supported reporting systems through the lens of discursive design (RQ3). Our findings reveal that local journalists do not fully leverage AI's potential to support data-related work. Despite local journalists' limited awareness of AI's capabilities, they are willing to use it to process data and discover stories. Finally, we provide recommendations for improving AI-supported reporting in the context of local news, grounded in the journalists' socio-technical perspective and their imagined AI future capabilities.

翻译：报纸收入持续下滑促使地方新闻编辑室采用自动化技术以维持运营效率并保障社区信息供给。然而，现有研究对地方新闻工作者如何运用数字数据、以及哪些新闻生产流程最能受益于AI辅助（数据）报道的理解仍显不足。为弥补这一研究缺口，我们对德国地方新闻工作者进行了21次半结构化访谈。本研究系统探究了三个核心问题：地方新闻工作者如何运用数据与人工智能（RQ1）；他们在处理数据和AI技术时面临哪些挑战（RQ2）；以及通过话语设计视角分析新闻工作者对AI辅助报道系统潜力的自我认知（RQ3）。研究发现表明，地方新闻工作者尚未充分挖掘AI在数据相关工作方面的潜力。尽管他们对AI能力的认知存在局限，但仍表现出运用AI处理数据和发掘新闻线索的意愿。最后，基于新闻工作者的社会技术视角及其对AI未来能力的构想，我们提出了改进地方新闻领域AI辅助报道的具体建议。