Navigating the AI hype cycle

Threat or aid to journalists? Here’s a roundup of helpful guides

May 10, 2023

An image created with Midjourney, a generative AI tool, using the prompt: “a reporter recording video with their smartphone. eye-level shot. sony a1. --ar 3:2”, which guides the shot subject and gives hints about visual style

In the past few months, we’ve seen internet randos and professionals alike use generative artificial intelligence (AI) to conjure everything from dripped-out Popes, to the Wes Anderson-ification of everything, to rapid-response political attack ads.

The widespread availability of highly powered (and rapidly improving) AI tools — combined with the novelty bias of social media algorithms — is driving a wellspring of experimentation and execution.

As with most technologies, this is both a threat and an opportunity for local news. Are we facing a “textpocalypse,” as The Atlantic posited in March? While the use of these tools by others for nefarious purposes is outside our control, and mitigation may rely on a regulatory process playing catch-up for the foreseeable future, we can inspect these same tools for responsible, positive uses in service of our missions.

Either way, we are likely in for a period of significant change, even if it still remains to be seen when and how that will unfold.

At this early stage, the best advice I’ve heard, and what I’m relaying here today, is that it’s worth gaining first-hand experience with tools such as ChatGPT and DALL-E. That can be easier said than done, especially when everyone is already juggling more than a full-time job in journalism.

Fortunately, a variety of practitioners are actively exploring this space and creating resources that serve as guides for experimentation and adoption. Some notable ones include:

Joe Amditis at the Center for Cooperative Media is compiling a handbook of “prompts” for local news publishers — akin to recipes — for ChatGPT.

Aimee Rinehart and Ernest Kung at the Associated Press have created a Slack space for folks to share ideas and questions. (Email ai@ap.org for access.) Aimee also moderated a great online panel on ChatGPT and DALL-E for journalism.

Nick Diakopoluos has started a site, aptly named “Generative AI in the Newsroom,” that is examining a variety of tools and approaches.

Dalia Hashim at the Partnership on AI is running a AI + Local News workstream, with a list of AI tools for publishers and a (soon-to-come) guidebook for procurement.

This will get easier with time, as the tools become easier to use and patterns emerge. Big tech companies are racing to incorporate these capabilities directly into tools such as Microsoft Office and Google Docs, and a Cambrian explosion of startups are building solutions to specific problems.

From a Knight perspective, in addition to supporting some of the efforts above, we’re looking to understand real opportunities in the coming year.

🏅Congrats to the Pulitzer Prize winners!

The Pulitzer Prizes honor excellence in journalism around the country, and we all expect the Washington Post and New York Times to take home awards. But it’s nice to see some smaller players get noticed along with the big fish. Most notably, Anna Wolfe at nonprofit Mississippi Today won for Local Reporting on a series about corruption by the governor, who steered millions of welfare dollars to family and friends, including former NFL quarterback Brett Favre. Also notable was a win by Kyle Whitmire at AL.com for Commentary on how Alabama’s Confederate and racist history still colors the present; and for Editorial Writing at our hometown Miami Herald, covering the failure of Florida officials to deliver on taxpayer-funded services for decades. Here’s the full list of winners for 2023.

Other news around the horn…

Research

💸 LION Publishers show growth in reader revenues. Many of the stories we hear in digital media are about slowdowns and shutdowns, with Vice and BuzzFeed News at the top of the list. But at a local level, the Local Independent Online News (LION) Publishers are showing growth and diversification of revenues according to a recent LION survey of members. While median publisher revenue for 2022 was $130,000, up slightly from $125,000 the year before, renewing members saw an increase of 28 percent, or $50,000, last year. And dependence on advertising was down, while reader revenues (subscriptions or memberships) were now part of the mix for 34 percent of members. Plus, 40 percent say they host events now. One example was the Springfield Daily Citizen, which launched events supported by corporate sponsors. “[This was] exactly what I needed––a jump-start in creative thinking toward our second year of generating revenue,” said Judi Kamien, the Daily Citizen’s chief development officer.

The Miami Herald just won’t take no for an answer

🪓Why breaking up (with newspapers) is so hard to do. We’ve all had the pleasure of easily subscribing to online publications, only to suffer great hardship when trying to unsubscribe. So we pity the Lenfest Institute’s Charles Jun, tasked with unsubscribing to 22 digital newspapers. Perhaps the biggest surprise was that two-thirds of the unsubscribes were relatively easy, taking less than five minutes. However, others, like the Miami Herald and Boston Globe, tried offering special deals to keep Jun on board (not unlike cable companies), and the Minneapolis Star Tribune made him go through nine pages to unsubscribe. And others made him suffer the indignity of picking up a phone to cancel. All this could change if the Federal Trade Commission follows through on its “Click to Cancel” rule proposal. As Jun concludes: “Journalism—especially local journalism—is built on trust. . . .That should extend to business practices as well.”

Launches

🏛️ Allbritton spends $20 million on nonprofit, fellowships. Apparently not all billionaires want to turn Twitter into an experiment in “free speech.” Robert Allbritton, who sold Politico to Axel Springer for more than $1 billion, had a noncompete clause in that deal, but was able to launch a new Allbritton Journalism Institute (AJI). The new Institute will include a nonprofit news outlet on politics run by aspiring journalism fellows who are paid $60,000 per year plus benefits, and will write for the outlet over an 18-month period. Allbritton’s $20 million grant to the Institute ain’t too shabby, allowing it to hire 20 journalists as mentors and a top-notch executive staff. “You can teach a certain amount in the classroom, but a lot of learning how to be a great reporter is doing it and working with people who can show you moves and enhance your thinking and enhance your writing,” Allbritton told Semafor.

Top row from left: Brendan Klinkenberg, Elaine Teng, Lori Higgins, Melissa Barragán Taboada. Middle row from left: Lillian M. Ortiz, Tracy Jan, Hayat Norimine, Dalila-Johari Paul. Bottom row from left: Meghann D. Garcia, Maia Hibbett, Maha Ahmed.

🔎 ProPublica announces first cohort for investigative training. While many women and people of color are underrepresented in the ranks of investigative journalism editors, ProPublica is trying to change that equation with its new Investigative Editor Training program. It announced the first class of the program, with 11 editors from a mix of publishers such as ESPN, Uvalde Leader-News, Chalkbeat Detroit and Gimlet Media (see photo above). The editors will attend a five-day boot camp in New York, and then gather virtually every two months, with each being assigned a ProPublica senior editor as mentor. The program is funded by the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation.

Evolutions

🎁 Lancaster newspaper gifted to public media station. In the search for sane ownership of local news outlets (i.e., not hedge funds), public media has emerged as an intriguing option. Most people think of their local public media station as just an outlet for their favorite NPR or PBS shows, but there’s potential for much more local coverage. WBEZ merged with the Chicago Sun-Times, KERA bought the Denton Record Chronicle, and now WITF in Lancaster, Penn., was gifted with LNP, a newspaper with a history going back to 1794. Gifted? Yes, the newspaper owners decided they wanted to have a serious steward of the news, so created a new nonprofit, Steinman Institute for Civic Engagement, turning the paper into a public benefit corporation. “WITF and LNP already share so much in common,” WITF President and CEO Ron Hetrick said. “We both have deep roots in the region and share a focus on local news and journalism that holds people in power accountable to the public.”

Hype video for the new class of corps members at Report for America

🎤 Report for America grows while industry contracts. With all the talk about layoffs and ghost newspapers, Report for America (RFA) just keeps chugging along, adding 60 more reporters across the nation to join the hundreds who will continue to report on underserved topics. This brings the total to 600 journalists placed since RFA’s launch in 2017. While the program has worked heavily with legacy newspapers, it now has a mix of newspapers, digital-only, radio, TV and news services. Plus, nearly half of the current corps members are people of color, and more than half are women – and they receive mentoring and support from RFA staff. “By sharing resources and fostering opportunities for peer networking, we can strengthen their reporting and their well-being,” said Rachel Rohr, vice president of program development at RFA.

❤️ Southerly pauses operations after five years. Southerly founder Lyndsey Gilpin has been a leader in the field of digital journalism, launching the publication in 2016 as a newsletter that grew to cover important environmental, justice and cultural stories about the South. Gilpin recently announced that she would be ending Southerly in its current form, and transition to a new phase in her career. “I am exploring options to ensure the community-led Southern environmental justice journalism we’ve built continues in a more sustainable way, while remaining free and accessible,” she wrote. Southerly’s Documenters program will move to the Southwest Louisiana Journal. We look forward to Gilpin’s next venture.