How Hrodna.life uses Gemini to create morning news summary
For Hrodna.life, "morning routine" means something different than it does for most newsrooms. Designated as an "extremist formation" by the Belarusian regime, the team operates in exile from Bialystok. They work out of MediaPort Belarus, a coworking hub that serves as a safe harbor for displaced journalists.
Their editorial challenge is volume and toxicity. A small team of ~8 people must monitor three distinct firehoses of information every morning:
Global Wires: What is happening in Ukraine and Poland that affects the border?
Local Leaks: Fragmented reports from readers still inside Grodno (often via secure, encrypted channels).
State Propaganda: Monitoring regime media to understand what new narratives or threats are being broadcast—a mentally draining task that involves sifting through hours of hate speech and disinformation.
Manually processing this "doom scroll" every morning was burning out their editors before the day even began.
The Solution: Gemini as the "Shield" Editor
Aliaksei and his team are testing a workflow where Gemini acts as the first line of defense—an "AI Morning Editor" that processes the noise so the humans can focus on the news.
The Workflow:
The Input: The team aggregates text exports from wire services and transcripts from state media channels.
The Prompt: They use a structured prompt to "teach" Gemini their specific editorial lens:
"Act as an editor for an independent Belarusian newsroom. Summarize the following text inputs into a 'Morning Briefing' with three distinct sections: 1. Critical Updates: New laws, arrests, or border changes. 2. Propaganda Watch: What are the dominant narratives in state media today? (Highlight contradictions). 3. The Grodno Angle: Any mentions of local infrastructure or officials."
The Outcome: Shared Intelligence
The result is a concise, text-based briefing that strips away the emotional toxicity of the propaganda, presenting only the informational signal.
Because Hrodna.life shares their Bialystok coworking space with other exiled teams (like MOST Media), this workflow has a multiplier effect. Aliaksei can print this AI-generated briefing or share it digitally with the wider "MediaPort" community. Instead of five different editors all doom-scrolling the same toxic feeds, they start their day with a shared "base layer" of facts.
Efficiency: Reduces 2 hours of monitoring to a 15-minute review.
Wellbeing: Protects journalists from direct exposure to raw hate speech by summarizing it first.