Local news will come to rely on AI

“If we automate some commodity news, we can provide a lot more information to people who need it.”

Because I am prone to occasional bouts of procrastination, I dawdled quite a while on Nieman Lab’s request for a prediction. And then it hit me: Why should I do all the thinking, writing and self-editing, when the new ChatGPT gadget is just sitting there, eager to take a stab?

In that spirit of sloth, I asked my new overlords, “What is the future of journalism?” Within seconds, I felt transported to every lanyard-dangling, crappy-coffee-serving panel I’ve served on or sat through since 2002:

“Journalism is going through a period of transition, and there is still a lot of value in the work that journalists do. But the industry is going to have to change in order to survive…

“One of the biggest challenges facing journalism is the decline in advertising revenue. One potential solution is to charge for online content…Charging for content can be a risky proposition, as it can alienate readers and drive them to other sources of information. It can also be difficult to get people to pay for something that they have become accustomed to getting for free…

“The work that journalists do is important, and it plays a crucial role in our democracy.”

Not bad, right?

A lot of people — especially teachers, or professors like me — are worried about this tool. “The College Essay Is Dead,” warns a recent Atlantic piece. And yes, it does provide a way for procrastinating, slothful students to submit plausible essays. Maybe they won’t get A’s, but most of the pieces I’ve seen would likely be good for at least a B.

But I predict that editors at struggling metro dailies, or thinly staffed nonprofits that are charged with covering government bodies, will someday look at this as a boon. Local newspapers and sites are getting thin these days. It isn’t just that they’re not publishing as many Pulitzer-finalist series as they used to. They also aren’t covering as many school boards, legislative committees, real-estate sales, new-business openings, and the rest of the grist that used to fill the back pages of newspapers. Even obituaries are largely relegated to paid notices from relatives. And as this information dries up, citizens feel more estranged from the agencies that govern their lives and the officials who set their tax rates and hire their superintendents.

There’s good reason for this news deficit. After the budget-trimmers have left you reeling, you’re not going to have one of your remaining reporters mindlessly type in city-commission minutes when they could be out covering news. But if we can automate some of this commodity news, we can provide a lot more information — much of it useful, if not sexy — to people who need it.

There are pitfalls, of course. One is the concern that this will just serve as a convenient way to eliminate more staff. We’ve heard that before. “Automated Game Stories To Make Sports Writers Obsolete,” warned Business Insider about software that generates articles based on baseball box scores. That piece was published in 2010 — or about 12 years before The New York Times bought the Athletic for $550 million in cash.

The bigger pitfall is the garbage-in, garbage-out problem. You can’t simply tell an AI program, “What did the town council do today?” or “Who got arrested last week?” You have to supply it with some raw information. The box-score equivalent would be minutes from a meeting, or incident reports from a police blotter. Would that be perfect? No. Would you want to publish it unedited? No. Could it save your staff a lot of time and generate a lot of goodwill for your readers? Yes.

Editors will do this because they have to. And I think they should — because, and here I quote the experts at ChatGPT, “I believe that journalism is still a valuable and necessary part of our society.” And in conclusion, fellow journalists, I just want to reiterate that “I think the industry needs to adapt to the changes that are taking place.”

Bill Grueskin is a professor at the Columbia Journalism School.

Because I am prone to occasional bouts of procrastination, I dawdled quite a while on Nieman Lab’s request for a prediction. And then it hit me: Why should I do all the thinking, writing and self-editing, when the new ChatGPT gadget is just sitting there, eager to take a stab?

In that spirit of sloth, I asked my new overlords, “What is the future of journalism?” Within seconds, I felt transported to every lanyard-dangling, crappy-coffee-serving panel I’ve served on or sat through since 2002:

“Journalism is going through a period of transition, and there is still a lot of value in the work that journalists do. But the industry is going to have to change in order to survive…

“One of the biggest challenges facing journalism is the decline in advertising revenue. One potential solution is to charge for online content…Charging for content can be a risky proposition, as it can alienate readers and drive them to other sources of information. It can also be difficult to get people to pay for something that they have become accustomed to getting for free…

“The work that journalists do is important, and it plays a crucial role in our democracy.”

Not bad, right?

A lot of people — especially teachers, or professors like me — are worried about this tool. “The College Essay Is Dead,” warns a recent Atlantic piece. And yes, it does provide a way for procrastinating, slothful students to submit plausible essays. Maybe they won’t get A’s, but most of the pieces I’ve seen would likely be good for at least a B.

But I predict that editors at struggling metro dailies, or thinly staffed nonprofits that are charged with covering government bodies, will someday look at this as a boon. Local newspapers and sites are getting thin these days. It isn’t just that they’re not publishing as many Pulitzer-finalist series as they used to. They also aren’t covering as many school boards, legislative committees, real-estate sales, new-business openings, and the rest of the grist that used to fill the back pages of newspapers. Even obituaries are largely relegated to paid notices from relatives. And as this information dries up, citizens feel more estranged from the agencies that govern their lives and the officials who set their tax rates and hire their superintendents.

There’s good reason for this news deficit. After the budget-trimmers have left you reeling, you’re not going to have one of your remaining reporters mindlessly type in city-commission minutes when they could be out covering news. But if we can automate some of this commodity news, we can provide a lot more information — much of it useful, if not sexy — to people who need it.

There are pitfalls, of course. One is the concern that this will just serve as a convenient way to eliminate more staff. We’ve heard that before. “Automated Game Stories To Make Sports Writers Obsolete,” warned Business Insider about software that generates articles based on baseball box scores. That piece was published in 2010 — or about 12 years before The New York Times bought the Athletic for $550 million in cash.

The bigger pitfall is the garbage-in, garbage-out problem. You can’t simply tell an AI program, “What did the town council do today?” or “Who got arrested last week?” You have to supply it with some raw information. The box-score equivalent would be minutes from a meeting, or incident reports from a police blotter. Would that be perfect? No. Would you want to publish it unedited? No. Could it save your staff a lot of time and generate a lot of goodwill for your readers? Yes.

Editors will do this because they have to. And I think they should — because, and here I quote the experts at ChatGPT, “I believe that journalism is still a valuable and necessary part of our society.” And in conclusion, fellow journalists, I just want to reiterate that “I think the industry needs to adapt to the changes that are taking place.”

Bill Grueskin is a professor at the Columbia Journalism School.

Alexandra Borchardt   The year of the climate journalism strategy

Kirstin McCudden   We’ll codify protection of journalism and newsgathering

Simon Galperin   Philanthropy stops investing in corporate media

Bill Grueskin   Local news will come to rely on AI

Masuma Ahuja   Journalism starts working for and with its communities

Karina Montoya   More reporters on the antitrust beat

Alex Sujong Laughlin   Credit where it’s due

Sue Cross   Thinking and acting collectively to save the news

Bill Adair   The year of the fact-check (no, really!)

Moreno Cruz Osório   Brazilian journalism turns wounds into action

Errin Haines   Journalists on the campaign trail mend trust with the public

Al Lucca   Digital news design gets interesting again

Ryan Kellett   Airline-like loyalty programs try to tie down news readers

Jennifer Choi and Jonathan Jackson   Funders finally bet on next-generation news entrepreneurs

Cassandra Etienne   Local news fellowships will help fight newsroom inequities

Eric Ulken   Generative AI brings wrongness at scale

Ariel Zirulnick   Journalism doubles down on user needs

Kerri Hoffman   Podcasting goes local

Priyanjana Bengani   Partisan local news networks will collaborate

Elite Truong   In platform collapse, an opportunity for community

AX Mina   Journalism in a time of permacrisis

Kathy Lu   We need emotionally agile newsroom leaders

Ståle Grut   Your newsroom experiences a Midjourney-gate, too

Cindy Royal   Yes, journalists should learn to code, but…

Shanté Cosme   The answer to “quiet quitting” is radical empathy

Sumi Aggarwal   Smart newsrooms will prioritize board development

Andrew Losowsky   Journalism realizes the replacement for Twitter is not a new Twitter

Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau   More of the same

Don Day   The news about the news is bad. I’m optimistic.

Mariana Moura Santos   A woman who speaks is a woman who changes the world

Jacob L. Nelson   Despite it all, people will still want to be journalists

Raney Aronson-Rath   Journalists will band together to fight intimidation

Kaitlin C. Miller   Harassment in journalism won’t get better, but we’ll talk about it more openly

Cory Bergman   The AI content flood

Parker Molloy   We’ll reach new heights of moral panic

Julia Beizer   News fatigue shows us a clear path forward

Leezel Tanglao   Community partnerships drive better reporting

Gabe Schneider   Well-funded journalism leaders stop making disparate pay

Molly de Aguiar and Mandy Van Deven   Narrative change trend brings new money to journalism

Richard Tofel   The press might get better at vetting presidential candidates

Michael Schudson   Journalism gets more and more difficult

Felicitas Carrique and Becca Aaronson   News product goes from trend to standard

Emily Nonko   Incarcerated reporters get more bylines

Barbara Raab   More journalism funders will take more risks

Mael Vallejo   More threats to press freedom across the Americas

Rachel Glickhouse   Humanizing newsrooms will be a badge of honor

Surya Mattu   Data journalists learn from photojournalists

Rodney Gibbs   Recalibrating how we work apart

Jim VandeHei   There is no “peak newsletter”

David Cohn   AI made this prediction

Sarabeth Berman   Nonprofit local news shows that it can scale

Burt Herman   The year AI truly arrives — and with it the reckoning

Michael W. Wagner   The backlash against pro-democracy reporting is coming

Delano Massey   The industry shakes its imposter syndrome

Wilson Liévano   Diaspora journalism takes the next step

S. Mitra Kalita   “Everything sucks. Good luck to you.”

Alex Perry   New paths to transparency without Twitter

Alexandra Svokos   Working harder to reach audiences where they are

Esther Kezia Thorpe   Subscription pressures force product innovation

Brian Stelter   Finding new ways to reach news avoiders

Martina Efeyini   Talk to Gen Z. They’re the experts of Gen Z.

Andrew Donohue   We’ll find out whether journalism can, indeed, save democracy

John Davidow   A year of intergenerational learning

Hillary Frey   Death to the labor-intensive memo for prospective hires

Sarah Stonbely   Growth in public funding for news and information at the state and local levels

Nicholas Diakopoulos   Journalists productively harness generative AI tools

Susan Chira   Equipping local journalism

Anthony Nadler   Confronting media gerrymandering

Amethyst J. Davis   The slight of the great contraction

Valérie Bélair-Gagnon   Well-being will become a core tenet of journalism

Basile Simon   Towards supporting criminal accountability

Joe Amditis   AI throws a lifeline to local publishers

Stefanie Murray   The year U.S. media stops screwing around and becomes pro-democracy

Lisa Heyamoto   The independent news industry gets a roadmap to sustainability

Kavya Sukumar   Belling the cat: The rise of independent fact-checking at scale

Sue Schardt   Toward a new poetics of journalism

Jessica Maddox   Journalists keep getting manipulated by internet culture

Julia Angwin   Democracies will get serious about saving journalism

Jody Brannon   We’ll embrace policy remedies

Victor Pickard   The year journalism and capitalism finally divorce

Zizi Papacharissi   Platforms are over

Megan Lucero and Shirish Kulkarni   The future of journalism is not you

Mar Cabra   The inevitable mental health revolution

Matt Rasnic   More newsroom workers turn to organized labor

Alan Henry   A reckoning with why trust in news is so low

Sam Gregory   Synthetic media forces us to understand how media gets made

Gina Chua   The traditional story structure gets deconstructed

Janet Haven   ChatGPT and the future of trust 

Johannes Klingebiel   The innovation team, R.I.P.

Tim Carmody   Newsletter writers need a new ethics

Dominic-Madori Davis   Everyone finally realizes the need for diverse voices in tech reporting

Francesco Zaffarano   There is no end of “social media”

Brian Moritz   Rebuilding the news bundle

Jakob Moll   Journalism startups will think beyond English

Joshua P. Darr   Local to live, wire to wither

Sarah Marshall   A web channel strategy won’t be enough

Jenna Weiss-Berman   The economic downturn benefits the podcasting industry. (No, really!)

Jessica Clark   Open discourse retrenches

Joanne McNeil   Facebook and the media kiss and make up

Ben Werdmuller   The internet is up for grabs again

Christina Shih   Shared values move from nice-to-haves to essentials

Jonas Kaiser   Rejecting the “free speech” frame

Sarah Alvarez   Dream bigger or lose out

Dannagal G. Young   Stop rewarding elite performances of identity threat

Laxmi Parthasarathy   Unlocking the silent demand for international journalism

Daniel Trielli   Trust in news will continue to fall. Just look at Brazil.

Danielle K. Brown and Kathleen Searles   DEI efforts must consider mental health and online abuse

Jennifer Brandel   AI couldn’t care less. Journalists will care more. 

Dana Lacey   Tech will screw publishers over

Sue Robinson   Engagement journalism will have to confront a tougher reality

Ryan Gantz   “I’m sorry, but I’m a large language model”

Gordon Crovitz   The year advertisers stop funding misinformation

Khushbu Shah   Global reporting will suffer

Jim Friedlich   Local journalism steps up to the challenge of civic coverage

Jaden Amos   TikTok personality journalists continue to rise

David Skok   Renewed interest in human-powered reporting

Snigdha Sur   Newsrooms get nimble in a recession

Jarrad Henderson   Video editing will help people understand the media they consume

Paul Cheung   More news organizations will realize they are in the business of impact, not eyeballs

Eric Nuzum   A focus on people instead of power

Anita Varma   Journalism prioritizes the basic need for survival

Taylor Lorenz   The “creator economy” will be astroturfed

Sam Guzik   AI will start fact-checking. We may not like the results.

Walter Frick   Journalists wake up to the power of prediction markets

Nicholas Jackson   There will be launches — and we’ll keep doing the work

Ryan Nave   Citizen journalism, but make it equitable

Mario García   More newsrooms go mobile-first

Emma Carew Grovum   The year to resist forgetting about diversity

Anika Anand   Independent news businesses lead the way on healthy work cultures

Mary Walter-Brown and Tristan Loper   Mission-driven metrics become our North Star

Christoph Mergerson   The rot at the core of the news business

Jesse Holcomb   Buffeted, whipped, bullied, pulled

Peter Bale   Rising costs force more digital innovation

Amy Schmitz Weiss   Journalism education faces a crossroads

Pia Frey   Publishers start polling their users at scale

A.J. Bauer   Covering the right wrong

Eric Thurm   Journalists think of themselves as workers

Anna Nirmala   News organizations get new structures

Eric Holthaus   As social media fragments, marginalized voices gain more power

Janelle Salanga   Journalists work from a place of harm reduction

Upasna Gautam   Technology that performs at the speed of news

Doris Truong   Workers demand to be paid what the job is worth

Cari Nazeer and Emily Goligoski   News organizations step up their support for caregivers

Tamar Charney   Flux is the new stability

Ayala Panievsky   It’s time for PR for journalism

Nikki Usher   This is the year of the RSS reader. (Really!)

J. Siguru Wahutu   American journalism reckons with its colonialist tendencies

Tre'vell Anderson   Continued culpability in anti-trans campaigns

Nicholas Thompson   The year AI actually changes the media business

Peter Sterne   AI enters the newsroom

Juleyka Lantigua   Newsrooms recognize women of color as the canaries in the coal mine

Laura E. Davis   The year we embrace the robots — and ourselves

Mauricio Cabrera   It’s no longer about audiences, it’s about communities

Joni Deutsch   Podcast collaboration — not competition — breeds excellence

Kaitlyn Wells   We’ll prioritize media literacy for children

Josh Schwartz   The AI spammers are coming

Larry Ryckman   We’ll work together with our competitors