Technologies like AI can augment—not automate—the industry.
In a journalism landscape altered by new technology, the next generation of newsmakers brings science to the art of storytelling. They are analytical about how they approach reporting and editing and focused on research and experimentation.
Newsrooms now have at their disposal the resources to scale production, free up journalists from time-consuming tasks, and simultaneously differentiate their reporting. Data and computer science are rapidly becoming integral to this process while changing how information is gathered, produced, distributed, and monetized.
Artificial intelligence tools can generate text directly from data, find hidden insights within video footage, transcribe and translate interviews in real time, and even create multiple versions of the same story. The adoption of AI in newsrooms also opens up new editorial roles, including automation editors, algorithmic accountability reporters, and computational journalists.
In this new editorial equation, technology is the variable and journalistic standards are the constant. AI is just another tool in the journalistic toolbox that can strengthen its depth and breadth, just as the revolutions of the internet, telephone, and typewriter once did.
AI may involve sophisticated algorithms, but the conclusions drawn by machines are not always correct. Journalists must always be questioning outcomes, validating methodologies, and ensuring explainability. This is no easy task: algorithms are difficult to audit and, as such, to hold accountable.
The insights generated through AI should be used as a compass that guides reporting, not as a clock that provides infallible information.1 AI is created by humans, and it can make mistakes, often as a result of biases in how the AI was designed and in the data used to train it. The output is only as good as the input.
To put AI to good use, newsmakers across the industry must start experimenting with it. That doesn’t mean journalists need to become technologists, but they do need to become more responsive to transformation. It’s not about a particular technology; it’s about editorial adaptability.
For newsrooms to succeed in this technological era, they need to deploy updated methods that can keep up with constant change. Iterative journalism begins with identifying the audience’s information needs, through techniques such as minimally viable stories, augmented audience understanding, and accelerated research. Iterative journalism emphasizes feedback by cycling through several versions of an idea, bringing a product development mind-set to storytelling.
Combining journalistic intuition, powerful technology, and a culture of collaboration, iterative journalism enables news organizations to increasingly align their output with their consumers’ demands.
The place where AIs can contribute to this process is in helping us understand news readers and contextualize what they care about. However, the proliferation of these smart algorithms has led some people to believe that the world can be quantified, reduced to numerical values, like when a machine extracts “sentiment scores” from a politician’s speech or uses social media to measure public interest in a specific topic.
Journalists are attracted to this notion because the data extracted through AI may get them closer to the truth. Being able to use analytical signals can ground reporting in facts and even strengthen the notion that news can be a key source of guidance for society.
Yet if everything is boiled down to numbers, we lose sight of human nature. It becomes much more challenging to connect with news consumers when the coolness of data overtakes the warmth of storytelling.
Therefore, even though we have a surplus of data that can be mined and analyzed in mass quantities through AI, it is now more important than ever to put the human at the center of the process. Iterative journalism is not about “pivoting to AI”; it’s about surrounding human reporters with AI that can augment their abilities.
The art of storytelling is the very fabric of journalism; it’s what lets us connect and relate to others. AI will not replace journalism. Journalists will always need to put the pieces together, to construct narratives through which we understand the human experience.
The Newsmaker takes comfort in this, knowing that embracing AI has equipped her with a new set of tools to uncover the truth, while also knowing that no algorithm will ever take over her journalistic judgment.