The news is staring into an AI abyss

It's been a brutal start to the news industry in 2024.

The year began with a huge round of layoffs impacting newsrooms at the Los Angeles Times (almost a quarter of its newsroom), Time Magazine, and soon Business Insider.

That's more than 500 US journalism jobs gone within the first month of the year, off the back of a brutal 2023 where more than 3,000 roles were shed across the industry in broadcast, print & digital. Historic walkouts in the US have ensued.

It's not just traditional news organisations that have been impacted either. Conde Naste has announced its music site Pitchfork, probably the most influential critical voice of the industry (and whose album review scores were analysed across the web), will be absorbed into GQ magazine, with layoffs already underway, and more seemingly inevitable.

Worryingly for the Australian media, these US-led trends are usually a portent of things to come.

Free, ad-supported businesses are under serious threat; they were already hamstrung as the majority of digital ad revenue goes to Google, Meta & Amazon. Making money has been tough, and the attention economy is struggling to sustain these expensive newsrooms.

However add the rapid rise and deep influence of AI into the mix and we could see this battered industry brought to its knees.

AI generated articles are beginning to appear in your Google news feed, while 404 Media has revealed numerous examples of AI ripoffs of legitimate publications, effectively gaming the algorithm and taking more money out of the pockets of the industry. Google has challenged this assertion, saying Google News focuses on the quality of the content, not how it was produced – but it remains clear there is a new existential threat facing the publishing world.

And it's not just straight AI via Large Language Models (LLMs) taking their piece of flesh, as algorithms replace recommendations across the web. Your music services, video streaming, social media feeds – all are discouraging us from much independent or third-party influence as we tap, scroll and consume the way these platforms want us to. And we're not putting up much of a fight either.

This is even becoming a threat to the master of search, Google, as Tik-Tok begins to redefine itself as the search engine of choice for Gen Z.

It doesn't help that the news industry is kicking a couple of own goals itself in playing with AI. Or blaming AI for their own mistakes (spoiler alert: It's not Photoshop's fault)

So - how the hell does the news survive? It's not going to be easy....

Journalists need to become entrepreneurs

I spent 15 years of my career working in newsrooms in almost every Australian free-to-air network (sorry Network Seven), shoulder-to-shoulder with brilliant journalists, producers, camera operators, editors and more. I loved my time as a journalist and still consider it a large part of my DNA. But the industry has a blind spot when it comes to adapting to change.

The news-as-a-destination approach to browsing the web has changed rapidly, as consumers let the news find them via search & social, losing that direct relationship they used to have with their readers. This is eloquently laid out by Casey Newton in a recent Hard Fork Podcast, well worth a listen.

Publishers became hooked on this drug, as traffic rose and ad revenues with it – but in doing so they ceded control to Facebook and Google, and when Facebook was embroiled in numerous controversies, they stepped back from news coverage and slashed referral traffic with it. While some markets – including Australia – have forced social media platforms to pay publishers for news content, but the payments have hardly gone into the pockets of quality journalism, with smaller publications complaining about clickbait hoovering up this money.

But there has been an ember of opportunity from this dumpster fire within the industry, as journalists & micro media companies take to newsletter platforms to build a loyal subscriber base who want to pay for content. Personally I am loving Platformer, 404 Media, Tangle, a slew of AI newsletters and more. Ironically delivered by the oldest digital distrubtion method – email – but I get what I want when I want and it builds loyalty, and with it revenue straight into the pockets of the creators who delivered it.

Embrace AI as a tool, not a threat

As someone recently said to me "AI won't replace lawyers, but lawyers who use AI will replace lawyers who don't". As LLMs evolve in quality and reliability (check out Perplexity for reliable AI answers complete with sources) – its time to lean into this tech, learn some new skills and most importantly, adapt.

I use AI weekly for personal and professional use. It is an assistant, not a replacement, covering base tasks and slashing the time to produce a lot of the documentation, ideation and process planning I need. But it still needs my own personal layer of knowledge, experience and nuance to nail the work.

While one of a journalist's best skills is cynicism and critical thinking – it can also spill over into recalcitrance – something I saw a lot of as I helped newsrooms enter the digital age.

Regulation

Government regulation isn't exactly well-known for keeping up with tech, but when Open AI CEO Sam Altman pushes Congress to regulate this emerging tech, it's time to pay attention.

The key to this regulation has to be nuance – former President Barack Obama outlined this eloquently in his recent interview with Nilay Patel of The Verge, calling on the tech community to consider a stint with the US government to help them set the guard-rails of AI without limiting its incredible capacity to help humanity in the fields of medicine & science.

Governments around the world need to come together and move quickly before it's too late to put the AI genie back into the bottle.

AI is an incredibly exciting new tool that has incredible power to change society – but unless many industries lean in and embrace this technology to harness it properly, it could destroy them in the process.

I strongly believe AI won't replace journalists, but journalists need to become more curious and use it as a tool to grow their stature in society, not diminish it.

See you next time,

Val