This week we’re joined by Jacqui Merrington, who has her own Substack The Happy Journalist focused on showcasing how new tech can be used positively in journalism. Most recently she led one of the first generative AI experiments at Reach as well as devising and leading a project aimed at developing new business models for their smallest local sites using AI, interactive content formats and newsletters.
Jacqui takes us through the reasons she’s optimistic about journalists using AI, how newsrooms can go about implementing it sustainably, and what best (and worst) practice looks like in 2023.
And remember – we don’t have a catchphrase.
AI and how publishers have experimented with new generative tools will be one of the chapters we explore as part of our upcoming Media Moments 2023 report. Find out more and pre-register for the report here.
Here are some highlights from the episode:
Why publishers need to get ahead with AI
I think journalism has a really important role to play in making sense of [AI], communicating it, understanding it, shaping the narrative around it. I’m old enough to remember when the internet came along, and in the media we were quite slow to react. We decided that online content might cannibalise print, so we all buried our heads in the sand for a bit too long. It felt like we were always on the back foot.
Steve Hasker at Thomson Reuters a few weeks ago was credited with saying it will be an even bigger change than the internet. For me, that means we’ve got to get on the front foot with it. We’ve got to understand the pace of change, understand why people are nervous about it. But this time we’ve got newsrooms full of people who are quite eager to try things out, to experiment.
As an industry, we’re looking really narrowly through the lens of, what’s this going to do for journalism? What’s this going to do to us in the media? But if we look at AI as this paradigmatic shift in how the world works; something that will be everywhere, will be affecting everyone, then I think journalists are in a really good place to learn quickly, to interpret it, to communicate it, to help people navigate through that change.
We’re used to disruption. We can be early adopters. And I think if journalists feel that AI is a tool that can empower them, and they’ve got a place in the world to help others navigate the change that AI brings to the world, then I think that puts us in quite a good place.
Exploring what AI can do
We’re only at the start of learning all the things that [AI] can do. I think the most important thing with it is going to be transparency. Because it can write a story at the moment – it can’t write a very good story, but it can write a story. That will get better. And there has to be a kind of code which says, we need to be transparent about where AI is being used, and how AI is being used in the creation of content.
There’ll be absolute merit in it producing content over time. I think it will always need human intervention. It can’t come up with the ideas. It can’t necessarily produce a story that’s accurate – it needs checking, and it often needs enhancing because it’s fairly basic with what it can produce in terms of story writing and creativity.
So anyone who’s experimenting with AI at the moment, in all its different forms, and all the different things that it can do is doing the right thing. But at the very base level, we’ve got to be transparent about where we’re using it.
Reinforcing the value of human journalism
Longer term – this is me with my glass half full again – the proliferation of bad actors around AI will come to reinforce why that human intervention and why journalism is so, so important. At the moment I think we struggle in a lot of cases to unlock the value in journalism, to show people how much value it has.
We had this same thing when social media came out. How do we differentiate ourselves from all of what’s happening on social media, and all of the people who claim to be reporters on social media ‘reporting’ events? What we did to differentiate ourselves was underline that trust in journalism.
I think it’s going to be the same thing with AI, and we just need to keep reinforcing the humanity and trust that journalism has and brings to that.
This was a great episode and reminded me that recently, every time someone (or I) says AI can’t do X I add “yet” (usually silently, to myself) because there are numerous things AI couldn’t do but now can and it’s evolving rapidly and surprising people every step of the way. Acknowledging the “yet” of AI I think is important to deal with the threat of complacency that was referenced right at the start of this episode in relation to the coming of the web.