There has been some discussion recently about the use of AI in journalism. While I think there are obvious downsides to outsourcing too much thinking to computers, I would argue strongly that large-scale language models are currently underutilized in journalism.
My strength as a journalist is writing, especially writing quickly.
So while I think there are personal risks to relying on AI to generate prose, I also don’t think there’s much benefit. On the other hand, there are journalists in my career who are definitely known. wonderful I’m a reporter, but I’m having a hard time writing. For journalists with such well-rounded skills, the ability to throw notes and interviews into a context window to come up with story ideas can be extremely useful.
In particular, it might be really helpful To society. This is because, although I know many strong journalists who struggle with writing, the reality is that people with such skills are quite rare in the field.
In a time when journalism had a more stable revenue base, good reporters were valuable assets to the team, supported by more editorial support or simply paired with other journalists who could serve as writing partners. However, that revenue base has been lost. The level of editing support that was previously available was much more expensive and rarer. So a certain amount of potentially promising reports just aren’t executed.
That’s no good. It’s important to remember that the point of journalism is journalism. output — to clarify the facts and create a more informed reading public — is not. process. And journalism in terms of its output is in crisis, with many of its forms no longer as economically viable as they once were. The world urgently needs ways to improve the productivity of journalism, especially the reporting of the day-to-day aspects of state and local government that have been disrupted by the changing technological landscape.
I think there’s good reason to believe that AI can be of great help here.
