ChatGPT is an emerging AI (Artificial Intelligence) tool that has been integrated into the daily lives of humans. However, despite the growing proliferation of ChatGPT’s usage, little attention has been paid to the gratification obtained by university students when using ChatGPT to learn about news reporting. Adopting the well-grounded uses and gratifications theory (UGT), this exploratory research paper identifies why and how students at a university in Hong Kong use ChatGPT to assist in learning about news reporting. Findings stemming from semi-structured focus group discussions with twenty-nine students revealed that news reporting learning assisted by ChatGPT is influenced by information seeking, convenience, social connectedness, and efficiency gratification. ChatGPT can help students propose topics, create interview questions, integrate materials, suggest reporting frameworks, proofread, and modify their learning of news reporting. As indicated in our findings, researchers should be aware of the gratifications obtained by students in stimulating them to utilise ChatGPT in the news reporting learning process and consider the challenges and ethical issues of this new technology.