How will journalists use ChatGPT? Clues from a newsroom that’s been using AI for years
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Wednesday, March 1, 2023
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How will journalists use ChatGPT? Clues from a newsroom that’s been using AI for yearsIf we stay on the current trajectory, it’s utterly plausible that AI language tools will begin to blend into our daily workflows, similar to how Google and Google Translate have. By Jeff Israely. |
What We’re Reading
embedded / kate lindsay
“Shit You Should Care About” is a Gen Z-focused mini media empire →
“A lot of the newsrooms that reach out to me for advice or consulting or whatever, they’re always trying to reach the youth. And sometimes I think there’s actually nothing wrong with continuing to serve the audience that you serve because hopefully, all of us will grow up and we will have learned good media literacy and we will be reaching for these sources. We’ll be going to the BBC and reading Vox or whatever for bigger, chunkier explainers. And so you shouldn’t put all your focus into trying to grab the youth because hopefully we will grow up, and we still need that really good journalism that is quite high level.”
NBCU Academy / Katelyn Burns
How journalists can responsibly report on trans kids →
“The ‘debate’ over trans kids is happening now not because of any new scientific data showing cracks in the regularly prescribed regimen given to trans adolescents. It's the result of a growing movement of anti-trans activists and conservative politicians who want to limit LGBTQ rights, especially after losing on gay marriage and failing to make headway in passing anti-trans bathroom bills.”
AP NEWS / Michelle Chapman
TikTok sets a new one-hour default time limit for minors →
“Cormac Keenan, head of trust and safety at TikTok said in a blog post Wednesday that when the 60-minute limit is reached, minors will be prompted to enter a passcode and make an ‘active decision’ to keep watching.”
Substack / Jairaj Sethi
Substack on reaching 2 million paid subs and “saving” writers from social media →
“Great work is valuable and deserves to be rewarded with money. That means that publishers should have a way to make a living, or even a fortune, from doing the work they believe in. Money is the fuel that makes the entire engine work, and it's a healthier, more honest metric than ‘eyeballs’ or engagement.”
The Guardian / Jim Waterson
Former U.K. health minister trusted a journalist with personal WhatsApp messages. She leaked them all. →
"The main lesson I've learned from this is not to hire someone who absolutely hates your signature policy as your ghostwriter."
TechCrunch / Sarah Perez
Magazine app Flipboard adds support for original content with new notes feature →
The Flipboard app is also adding a beta feature that will allow Mastodon users to visually flip through their timeline to view posts from the people they follow, similar to what they've offered for Twitter users.
The Verge / Nilay Patel
iHeartMedia CEO: Podcasting’s distribution and monetization model is “pretty close to perfect” →
“To some extent, you kill creativity and true innovation when you start to reverse-engineer what an asset should be for the content platform it's going to be distributed on … [Podcasting] has resisted this notion that a podcast episode is supposed to be 28 minutes long and have two ad breaks. It's actually a lot of different things. It can be a true crime limited series of eight to 10 episodes that are 30 minutes long, or it can be a ‘stuff to blow your mind’ episode with just two guys talking for three hours. Both are completely okay and actually really perform well.”
WSJ / Salvador Rodriguez and Patience Haggin
Former Facebook execs launch startup promising advertisers a privacy-conscious way to measure ad effectiveness →
“Anonym is one of a flood of companies building technologies to help brands mine data sets for insights about consumers in a way that better anonymizes individual users. U.S. marketers are expected to spend $21.9 billion on third-party data and related services this year”
New York Times / Ryan Mac, Mike Isaac, and Kate Conger
It’s not just you. Twitter outages are on the rise. →
In February alone, Twitter experienced at least four widespread outages, compared with nine in all of 2022.
WKMG / Mike DeForest
DeSantis' practice of "reviewing" public records regularly delays their release to Florida journalists by months →
The Florida Department of Corrections, the Florida Department of Health and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement are among several state agencies that have forwarded hundreds of requested public records to the governor's office for review, according to a newly uncovered log used by DeSantis' staff.
Washington Post
The story behind Rep. Matt Gaetz citing Chinese propaganda at a hearing →
Gaetz entered an article from the Global Times into the record. "I'm sorry, this is the Global Times from China?" U.S. Undersecretary of Defense Colin Kahl asked. "As a general matter, I don't take Beijing's propaganda at face value.”
CNN / Oliver Darcy
Should journalists stop calling Fox News a news outlet? →
“It has been particularly striking to see actual news organizations fail to acknowledge Fox News for what it is: a right-wing talk channel that profits off Republican propaganda. This isn’t an opinion. It is a fact laid bare via the hundreds of pages of legal documents in the Dominion lawsuit. And yet, credible newsrooms continue to describe the outlet as a ‘news’ network.”
Vanity Fair / Charlotte Klein
The New York Times remains embroiled in a back-and-forth over journalistic independence and “activism” →
"I don't believe the journalist-activist binary is useful. Every good journalist I've known has been an activist for values like truth and clarity and transparency," [Astead] Herndon said.
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