A couple of recent stories, which read well back to back, regarding AI and journalism/media here:
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I enjoy the idea of news not being written to maximise ad impressions. I think thatâs been one of the most generally damaging things on the internet.
But I also donât think publishers are likely to forge genuine relationships with readers either. And any of the ones that have enough scale/brand identity to do so are too far gone from what their âidentityâ was supposed to be anyway, WaPo/LA Times/Grauniad/Independent etc. You could argue the right wing ones already do that better than the rest, but itâs all totally disingenuous anyway.
Itâs hard for me to see what the BBC is really like over there as I get the non UK version but a lot of what I read seems to be way more clickbaity and some is pure slop.
I flip flop on AI so often but over time Iâve just decided to accept itâs going to change everything and the only way to avoid negative impacts of it is to embrace it. But itâs been such a large part of my career, since before the generative era that that probably would have been my take anyway regardless of my opinions on it.
Either way, unstoppable march of progress etc⌠May as well not make yourself miserable about it and just enjoy the ride. Maybe it wonât ruin everything and the internet and media in general was already going fucky anyway.
The Washington Post and LA Times are both owned by billionaire tech people, so yes there. But The Guardian is still its own media group and has been left-leaning for about 200 years so I donât think it belongs next to them in that sentence.
Regarding thisâŚ
⌠granted I donât know what your occupation is, and this isnât meant personally, but in regards to my own field Iâm tired of journalists and media people touting this. On a skate-related (but not talking about skateboarding note) Kyle Beachy captured it well recently in this:
The BBC just seems to be a quote machine these days. âTrump said blah, blah, blah last nightâŚâ then doesnât back the story up with any facts about if what he said was or wasnât factually correct and it all feels very one sided at times or the Prime Minster was in France for a meeting about the so and so deal and said it went well and then not much more else, repeat in the next story. It feels like they are only allowed to report the bare minimum of the story most of the time.
I can see why people are turning off âmainstream mediaâ when alternative news sources really go into what is happening in much more detail with a big pinch of reading between the lines which people love but the BBC canât do.
I think the future for journalists alongside AI is reasonably bright. The internet has been full of slop since long before AI took over.
If you look at what Google is doing at the moment - taking pieces of information from multiple online sources and creating tailor-made AI responses from them instead of linking to the best fit source - it means many websites (particularly smaller niche ones) get less traffic because their old tactic of generating the most SEO optimised result for niche queries now, at best, gets bundled alongside content from bigger sites and other sources. If you run a small website you will almost certainly have seen your old trusty reviews and in-depth niche articles tanking as on the fly AI generates better content for the majority of searches.
The impact of this is that the old SEO tactic of writing the same exact content as every other site, or taking the top three results from any search you were after and bundling everything into one longer article with more keywords and more niche topics covered has died. Thatâs actually pretty great because it means instead of 1000s of websites writing the exact same article over and over to try and get the top position, the new gold rush is to write new content and answer new questions that havenât been sufficiently dealt with online so that you might get bundled into AI responses and gain some clicks.
Google is also rewarding sites based EEAT which in theory should reward real journalists, professionals, and other people who can add real value to the internet rather than greedy spam merchants who just want to rank top to get clicks!
Of course it goes without saying that those spammers will be hungrily trialling new tactics to get one over on Google. One of the popular ways to do it is to use websites with authority to host âparasiteâ articles that are unrelated to their core audience. You will have seen these pop up on Reddit and sites like that but also on hacked Wordpress sites and any kind of reputable site that allows user generated content.
Anyway, in short. If you are having original ideas and creating original content that is written for a real audience, you should find AI needs you even more than you need it!
They do that to try and remain impartial. Reporting the facts as they are known and verified, rather than extrapolating and fillling in the gaps of the unknown with blatantly made up stuff while offering them as âopinion piecesâ.
But itâll be things like âTrumps says the American economy is at its strongest yet,â then straight to the next story⌠when the facts say very different. Say the France deal didnât go to plan, theyâll still just report the PMâs sound bite and nothing else. Daft stuff like that, Iâve been noticing it more.
I guess impartial news means not actual news. Reporting at the most basic surface level repeating. Makes the BBC seem pointless.
Yeah, I know what you mean Voodz. If itâs the headline programmes, often thatâs all you are getting but they do dig into more detail on Newsnight, Unspun World, GNP, Newshour, Global Jigsaw, Newscast, etc.
Yeah, I bet most people get their news from the headline programs though and occasionally tune to the other shows.
Yeah, youâre right. That and the website are probably where teh majority of people are getting their news if they look at the beeb.
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Some mainstream and local media are also doing more and more of the thing where they report an incident/occurence/event has happened then we get another 4 paragraphs of quotes from a few random twats on social media as some sort of representative panel on behalf of the countryâs readership.
Dazza1981 said blah blah blah whilst MissBelleEnd69 disagreed, saying blah blah blah
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Itâs so lazy when they do that. How long does that article take to put together?! Thereâs no real journalism. I wonder if itâs AI made and then read over by someone to check it before posting the article.
Tons of local papers/media are owned by the Reach group these days who are well known for either employing the bare minimum of staff and/or scraping Twitter for ânewsâ. Theyâve destroyed local media
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I love those Reach newspaper sites they make me nostalgic for the old internet!
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Our local news is reach and the website is so bad it keeps breaking my phone browser 
Not to mention the news is dross with AI fuelled nonsense shit inbetween.
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Still could!
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That would make sense. Our local rag has headlines that donât match the story, sentences that end half way through, stories about things that have happened with dates set in the future, the works. All served up behind a paywall, lol.
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CEOs of Reach are ex-CEO of Lloyds bank and the other former CEO of Ladbrokes.
Forgive my cynical perspective but Iâm thinking theyâre not that bothered about journalistic integrity or localised news.
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100% agree - sending a press release to a Reach title gets an immediate response from a âpartnership managerâ or equiv, doubt thereâs 10 paid/trained journalists in the whole organisationâŚ
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