In 2017, artificial intelligence will slowly but surely make its presence known, both within newsrooms and to readers.
In newsrooms, bots will start to produce more stories where structured data is readily available — think game recaps, weather run downs, and overviews of how the stock market performed. This will free up resources and reduce costs. Robots will analyze complex editorial content of all lengths, and provide feedback to the humans sitting behind the keyboard. Much like how Netflix used data to help fine-tune House of Cards, news organizations will have the opportunity to adjust editorial narratives to make stories more engaging.
Google and Facebook will use artificial intelligence to identify fake news and help stop the spread of it.
Apple, Google, and Facebook will merge their fragmented audio, search, and news ecosystems while leveraging artificial intelligence to make recommendations across content types. For example, if you read an article in The Economist, you might get recommended a similar episode of the Planet Money podcast. This approach keeps users engaged with their devices and services longer…something that is financially advantageous for Apple, Google, and Facebook.
Bots will replace publishers’ iOS and Android apps. Data shows that nobody uses publisher apps, while messaging apps are insanely popular and growing larger everyday. Publishers would be smart to migrate resources away from maintaining unused apps and redirect them towards the development of bots that push the most relevant news directly to the screens that readers most frequently look at.
Newsrooms should embrace artificial intelligence, just as they have embraced other technological tools. AI will help us become better storytellers while simultaneously ensuring our audiences are the right ones.
Matt Karolian is director of audience engagement at The Boston Globe.
Sue Schardt Objectivity, fairness, balance, and love
Steve Henn The next revolution is voice
Pablo Boczkowski Fake news and the future of journalism
Erin Millar The bottom falls out of Canadian media
Francesco Marconi The year of augmented writing
Erin Pettigrew A year of reflection in tech
Tanya Cordrey The resurgence of reach
Matt Waite The people running the media are the problem
Nathalie Malinarich Making it easy
Guy Raz Inspiration and hope will matter more than ever
Caitlin Thompson High touch, high value
Melody Kramer Radically rethinking design
Lam Thuy Vo The primary source in the age of mechanical multiplication
Moreno Cruz Osório The year of transparency in Brazilian journalism
Tim Griggs The year we stop taking sides
Dhiya Kuriakose The year of digital detoxing
Mathew Ingram The Faustian Facebook dance continues
Sarah Wolozin Virtual reality on the open web
S.P. Sullivan Baking transparency into our routines
Tressie McMillan Cottom A path through the media’s coming legitimacy crisis
Alice Antheaume A new test for French media
Doris Truong Connecting with diverse perspectives
Hillary Frey Forests need to burn to regrow
Dan Gillmor Fix the demand side of news too
AX Mina 2017 is for the attention innovators
Jonathan Hunt Measurement companies get with the times
Helen Havlak Chasing mobile search results
Andrea Silenzi Podcasts dive into breaking news analysis
Ariane Bernard Better data about your users
Mike Ragsdale A smarter information diet
Amy Webb Journalism as a service
Ashley C. Woods Local journalism will fight a new fight
Mandy Velez The audience is the source and the story
Mary Meehan Feeling blue in a red state
Ole Reißmann Un-faking the news
Corey Ford The year of the rebelpreneur
Michael Oreskes Reversing the erosion of democracy
Juan Luis Sánchez Your predictions are our present
Almar Latour Thanks, #fakenews
Zizi Papacharissi Distracted journalism looks in the mirror
Ståle Grut The battle for high-quality VR
Jon Slade Trusted news, at a premium
Burt Herman Local news gets interesting
Jeremy Barr A terrible year for Tiers B through D
Liz McMillen The year of deep insights
Mario García Virtual reality on mobile leaps forward
David Chavern Fake news gets solved
Carrie Brown We won’t do enough
Margarita Noriega From pinning tweets to tweeting pins
Renée Kaplan Pure reach has reached its limit
Millie Tran International expansion without colonial overtones
Alberto Cairo Communicating uncertainty to our readers
Sarah Marshall Focusing on the why of the click
Ryan McCarthy Platforms grow up or grow more toxic
Liz Danzico The triumph of the small
Mira Lowe News literacy, bias, and “Hamilton”
Amy O'Leary Not just covering communities, reaching them
Claire Wardle Verification takes center stage
Dan Colarusso Let’s make live video we can love
Scott Dodd Nonprofits team up for impact
Mary Walter-Brown Getting comfortable asking for money
Aja Bogdanoff Comments start pulling their weight
David Skok What lies beyond paywalls
Michael Kuntz Trust is the new click
Ray Soto VR moves from experiments to immersion
Libby Bawcombe Kids board the podcast train
Anita Zielina The sales funnel reaches (and changes) the newsroom
Tracie Powell Building reader relationships
Adam Thomas The coming collaboration across Europe
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Truthiness in private spaces
Olivia Ma The year collaboration beats competition
Julia Beizer Building a coherent core identity
Lee Glendinning A call for great editing
Dannagal G. Young The return of the gatekeepers
Rachel Sklar Women are going to get loud
Sydette Harry Facing journalism’s history
Peter Sterne A dangerous anti-press mix
Molly de Aguiar Philanthropists galvanize around news
Megan H. Chan Cultural reporting goes mainstream
Emi Kolawole From empathy to community
Gabriel Snyder The aberration of 20th-century journalism
Alexis Lloyd Public trust for private realities
P. Kim Bui The year journalism teaches again
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Earn trust by working for (and with) readers
Taylor Lorenz “Selfie journalism” becomes a thing
Annemarie Dooling UGC as a path out of the bubble
Elizabeth Jensen Trust depends on the details
Kathleen Kingsbury Print as a premium offering
Sam Ford The year we talk about our awful metrics
Rebekah Monson Journalism is community-as-a-service
Sara M. Watson There is no neutral interface
Maria Bustillos “It’s true — I saw it on Facebook”
Andy Rossback The year of the user
Jonathan Stray A boom in responsible conservative media
Umbreen Bhatti A sense of journalists’ humanity
Keren Goldshlager Defining a focus, and then saying no
Errin Haines Chaos or community?
Ken Schwencke Disaggregation and collection
M. Scott Havens Quality advertising to pair with quality content
Katie Zhu The year of minority media
Rubina Madan Fillion Snapchat grows up
Amie Ferris-Rotman Вслед за Россией
Juliette De Maeyer and Dominique Trudel A rebirth of populist journalism
Robert Hernandez History will exclude you, again
Andrew Haeg The year of listening
Kawandeep Virdee Moving deeper than the machine of clicks
Carla Zanoni Prioritizing emotional health
Bill Adair The year of the fact-checking bot
Laura Walker Authentic voices, not fake news
Christopher Meighan Unlocking a deeper mobile experience
Nushin Rashidian A rise in high-price, high-value subscriptions
Javaun Moradi What can we own?
Rachel Schallom Stop flying over the flyover states
Nicholas Quah Podcasting’s coming class war
Richard Tofel The country doesn’t trust us — but they do believe us
Geetika Rudra Journalism is community
Jim Friedlich A banner year for venture philanthropy
Tim Herrera The safe space of service journalism
Eric Nuzum Podcasting stratifies into hard layers
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen News after advertising may look like news before advertising
Samantha Barry Messaging apps go mainstream
Andrew Ramsammy Rise of the rebel journalist
Joanne Lipman The year of the drone, really
Bill Keller A healthy skepticism about data
Andrew Losowsky Building our own communities
Matt Karolian AI improves publishing
Emily Goligoski Incorporating audience feedback at scale
Cindy Royal Preparing the digital educator-scholar hybrid
Priya Ganapati Mobile websites are ready for reinvention
David Weigel A test for online speech
Vivian Schiller Tested like never before
Swati Sharma Failing diversity is failing journalism
Reyhan Harmanci Bear witness — but then what?