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.
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Jessica Clark Open discourse retrenches
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Michael W. Wagner The backlash against pro-democracy reporting is coming
Christina Shih Shared values move from nice-to-haves to essentials
Anthony Nadler Confronting media gerrymandering
Richard Tofel The press might get better at vetting presidential candidates
Snigdha Sur Newsrooms get nimble in a recession
Jennifer Choi and Jonathan Jackson Funders finally bet on next-generation news entrepreneurs
Jakob Moll Journalism startups will think beyond English
Surya Mattu Data journalists learn from photojournalists
Tre'vell Anderson Continued culpability in anti-trans campaigns
Anita Varma Journalism prioritizes the basic need for survival
Jarrad Henderson Video editing will help people understand the media they consume
Larry Ryckman We’ll work together with our competitors
Ariel Zirulnick Journalism doubles down on user needs
Sarah Stonbely Growth in public funding for news and information at the state and local levels
Cory Bergman The AI content flood
Megan Lucero and Shirish Kulkarni The future of journalism is not you
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Eric Thurm Journalists think of themselves as workers
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau More of the same
Sam Gregory Synthetic media forces us to understand how media gets made
Matt Rasnic More newsroom workers turn to organized labor
Julia Beizer News fatigue shows us a clear path forward
Sarah Alvarez Dream bigger or lose out
Susan Chira Equipping local journalism
David Skok Renewed interest in human-powered reporting
Kerri Hoffman Podcasting goes local
Tim Carmody Newsletter writers need a new ethics
Danielle K. Brown and Kathleen Searles DEI efforts must consider mental health and online abuse
Victor Pickard The year journalism and capitalism finally divorce
Alex Perry New paths to transparency without Twitter
Lisa Heyamoto The independent news industry gets a roadmap to sustainability
Jessica Maddox Journalists keep getting manipulated by internet culture
Rachel Glickhouse Humanizing newsrooms will be a badge of honor
Doris Truong Workers demand to be paid what the job is worth
Don Day The news about the news is bad. I’m optimistic.
Gina Chua The traditional story structure gets deconstructed
Basile Simon Towards supporting criminal accountability
Christoph Mergerson The rot at the core of the news business
Joe Amditis AI throws a lifeline to local publishers
Ståle Grut Your newsroom experiences a Midjourney-gate, too
David Cohn AI made this prediction
Simon Galperin Philanthropy stops investing in corporate media
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Sue Cross Thinking and acting collectively to save the news
Errin Haines Journalists on the campaign trail mend trust with the public
Burt Herman The year AI truly arrives — and with it the reckoning
Zizi Papacharissi Platforms are over
Janet Haven ChatGPT and the future of trust
Jody Brannon We’ll embrace policy remedies
Rodney Gibbs Recalibrating how we work apart
Delano Massey The industry shakes its imposter syndrome
Juleyka Lantigua Newsrooms recognize women of color as the canaries in the coal mine
Dannagal G. Young Stop rewarding elite performances of identity threat
Kaitlin C. Miller Harassment in journalism won’t get better, but we’ll talk about it more openly
Josh Schwartz The AI spammers are coming
Sarabeth Berman Nonprofit local news shows that it can scale
Brian Moritz Rebuilding the news bundle
Alexandra Svokos Working harder to reach audiences where they are
Sue Robinson Engagement journalism will have to confront a tougher reality
S. Mitra Kalita “Everything sucks. Good luck to you.”
Sarah Marshall A web channel strategy won’t be enough
Julia Angwin Democracies will get serious about saving journalism
Molly de Aguiar and Mandy Van Deven Narrative change trend brings new money to journalism
Upasna Gautam Technology that performs at the speed of news
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Eric Ulken Generative AI brings wrongness at scale
Ryan Gantz “I’m sorry, but I’m a large language model”
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Hillary Frey Death to the labor-intensive memo for prospective hires
Gabe Schneider Well-funded journalism leaders stop making disparate pay
Emily Nonko Incarcerated reporters get more bylines
Paul Cheung More news organizations will realize they are in the business of impact, not eyeballs
Karina Montoya More reporters on the antitrust beat
Cindy Royal Yes, journalists should learn to code, but…
Felicitas Carrique and Becca Aaronson News product goes from trend to standard
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Eric Nuzum A focus on people instead of power
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Peter Sterne AI enters the newsroom
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Parker Molloy We’ll reach new heights of moral panic
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Sue Schardt Toward a new poetics of journalism
Jenna Weiss-Berman The economic downturn benefits the podcasting industry. (No, really!)
Amethyst J. Davis The slight of the great contraction
Sumi Aggarwal Smart newsrooms will prioritize board development
Nik Usher This is the year of the RSS reader. (Really!)
Taylor Lorenz The “creator economy” will be astroturfed
Bill Adair The year of the fact-check (no, really!)
Nicholas Thompson The year AI actually changes the media business
Stefanie Murray The year U.S. media stops screwing around and becomes pro-democracy
Joshua P. Darr Local to live, wire to wither
Elite Truong In platform collapse, an opportunity for community
Peter Bale Rising costs force more digital innovation
Wilson Liévano Diaspora journalism takes the next step
Francesco Zaffarano There is no end of “social media”
A.J. Bauer Covering the right wrong
Alexandra Borchardt The year of the climate journalism strategy
James Salanga Journalists work from a place of harm reduction
Eric Holthaus As social media fragments, marginalized voices gain more power
Michael Schudson Journalism gets more and more difficult
Tamar Charney Flux is the new stability
Jim VandeHei There is no “peak newsletter”
J. Siguru Wahutu American journalism reckons with its colonialist tendencies
Joanne McNeil Facebook and the media kiss and make up
Mariana Moura Santos A woman who speaks is a woman who changes the world
Kathy Lu We need emotionally agile newsroom leaders
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Ryan Kellett Airline-like loyalty programs try to tie down news readers
Mary Walter-Brown and Tristan Loper Mission-driven metrics become our North Star
Brian Stelter Finding new ways to reach news avoiders
Barbara Raab More journalism funders will take more risks
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Alex Sujong Laughlin Credit where it’s due
Al Lucca Digital news design gets interesting again
Martina Efeyini Talk to Gen Z. They’re the experts of Gen Z.
Masuma Ahuja Journalism starts working for and with its communities
Joni Deutsch Podcast collaboration — not competition — breeds excellence
Khushbu Shah Global reporting will suffer
Gordon Crovitz The year advertisers stop funding misinformation
Pia Frey Publishers start polling their users at scale
Daniel Trielli Trust in news will continue to fall. Just look at Brazil.
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Well-being will become a core tenet of journalism
Anika Anand Independent news businesses lead the way on healthy work cultures
Sam Guzik AI will start fact-checking. We may not like the results.
Ben Werdmuller The internet is up for grabs again
Shanté Cosme The answer to “quiet quitting” is radical empathy
Kaitlyn Wells We’ll prioritize media literacy for children
Anna Nirmala News organizations get new structures
Jim Friedlich Local journalism steps up to the challenge of civic coverage
Andrew Losowsky Journalism realizes the replacement for Twitter is not a new Twitter
Cari Nazeer and Emily Goligoski News organizations step up their support for caregivers
Andrew Donohue We’ll find out whether journalism can, indeed, save democracy
Dominic-Madori Davis Everyone finally realizes the need for diverse voices in tech reporting
Leezel Tanglao Community partnerships drive better reporting
Mar Cabra The inevitable mental health revolution