4 ms·

I think there's a difference between the concept of journalism and content creation / copywriting. Both come from the same school programs in a way, but while t

I think there's a difference between the concept of journalism and content creation / copywriting. Both come from the same school programs in a way, but while the latter is pretty trivially replaced by AI, the former is a combination of curiosity, multi-step investigation, physical ferreting of information and sensations, and emotionally charged writing to get a point across in a way that is recognizable as art when well done. Journalism is safe from AI for now, but was not safe from cost-cutting and (infotainementization?) cultural debasement. A potential upside is: lowering the marginal cost of page filling drivel so much in conjunction with declining advertisement revenue, the whole industry collapses in on itself, taking opinion pieces with it. The baseline for getting out of journalism school would be "write better than an AI", and the reporter jobs themselves become high status / high difficulty again. A potential downside is: nothing written ever matters again, all information is a rehashed AP cutting with prompt engineering, and AP / Reuters become a set of controlled bottlenecks. The scary thing is: this will be decided by whether the paying customer wants to be informed, or feel the warm glow of confirmation bias?

tivert 3y ago
> the whole industry collapses in on itself, taking opinion pieces with it. That's throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Opinion pieces will be the last to go, after everything of value has been destroyed. And honestly, not all opinion pieces are bad. Most are crap partisan hackery and outrage-bait, but some are very valuable (e.g. those unconnected with ideological bickering, those struggling to explain a point of view to hostile audiences, those "swimming against the tide," etc.).
- htrp 3y ago
  > Opinion pieces will be the last to go, after everything of value has been destroyed. Wouldn't opinion pieces be the first to go? We're already in a world where most opinion pieces are part of carefully orchestrated PR campaigns (sometimes even wholly ghostwritten) meant to drive policy discussion in one way or another. If you can AI write this and ascribe it to a reputable source, why wouldn't the industry adopt this as standard?
  - tivert 3y ago
    > Wouldn't opinion pieces be the first to go? No, because they're relatively cheap to produce. Everyone has an opinion and many people compelled to share and argue about them. The hard, expensive thing is gathering facts, doing deep investigation, or cultivating relationships so the facts come to you. That's why the intersection between blogs and journalists has always been opinion and punditry, since no one has the time to do anything else when they have a day job. > We're already in a world where most opinion pieces are part of carefully orchestrated PR campaigns (sometimes even wholly ghostwritten) meant to drive policy discussion in one way or another. If you can AI write this and ascribe it to a reputable source, why wouldn't the industry adopt this as standard? Isn't that an argument for the idea that "opinion pieces will be the last to go"?
  - charcircuit 3y ago
    >Wouldn't opinion pieces be the first to go? No because people are interested in the opinions of influencers.

tivert 3y ago

> the whole industry collapses in on itself, taking opinion pieces with it. That's throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Opinion pieces will be the last to go, after everything of value has been destroyed. And honestly, not all opinion pieces are bad. Most are crap partisan hackery and outrage-bait, but some are very valuable (e.g. those unconnected with ideological bickering, those struggling to explain a point of view to hostile audiences, those "swimming against the tide," etc.).

htrp 3y ago
> Opinion pieces will be the last to go, after everything of value has been destroyed. Wouldn't opinion pieces be the first to go? We're already in a world where most opinion pieces are part of carefully orchestrated PR campaigns (sometimes even wholly ghostwritten) meant to drive policy discussion in one way or another. If you can AI write this and ascribe it to a reputable source, why wouldn't the industry adopt this as standard?
- tivert 3y ago
  > Wouldn't opinion pieces be the first to go? No, because they're relatively cheap to produce. Everyone has an opinion and many people compelled to share and argue about them. The hard, expensive thing is gathering facts, doing deep investigation, or cultivating relationships so the facts come to you. That's why the intersection between blogs and journalists has always been opinion and punditry, since no one has the time to do anything else when they have a day job. > We're already in a world where most opinion pieces are part of carefully orchestrated PR campaigns (sometimes even wholly ghostwritten) meant to drive policy discussion in one way or another. If you can AI write this and ascribe it to a reputable source, why wouldn't the industry adopt this as standard? Isn't that an argument for the idea that "opinion pieces will be the last to go"?
- charcircuit 3y ago
  >Wouldn't opinion pieces be the first to go? No because people are interested in the opinions of influencers.