As one of the more than 70 journalism professionals I interviewed for a research study about technology use in journalism said, journalists are now expected to be a “Swiss army knife” in the newsroom, filling many roles depending on the need and circumstances. Interviewees were primarily from the United States and worked in news media of all kinds, including print, television, radio and digital-first. Shrinking news organizations paired with an ever-accelerating news cycle have left these journalists to do more with less, limiting their capacity for future planning. Journalists now cover wider beats, publish stories more quickly, tackle a wider range of sources and create multimedia content across more platforms than ever before.
When I examined my interviewees’ responses to my inquiries about journalism’s technological future, it became clear that this shift toward higher volume production with limited staff pushes journalists to focus on the present and immediate future of news, leaving most journalists with little energy to consider long-term changes. This profound shift in the industry means the majority of daily news journalists cannot imagine more distant technological futures. This separates journalists from the discourse on long-term impacts of cutting-edge technology tools like artificial intelligence (AI). To safely move forward with AI and other emerging technologies in the newsroom, it is essential to enable daily news journalists to participate in imagining what the future relationship between journalism and AI might be.
What is the current relationship between journalism and AI?
Current uses of AI in news among my interviewees and others varies widely; it is used to create SEO-friendly headlines, summarize articles for social media, write and debug code, process documents with Optical Character Recognition (OCR), transcribe audio files and more. Each of these uses meets an immediate need in the newsroom: they contribute to attempts to streamline workflows, increase efficiency and expand coverage, often in hopes of increasing revenue.
These applications also primarily use out-of-the-box tools from technology companies like OpenAI, not open-source or bespoke tools created by and for journalists, though there are limited examples of this, from Rolli to track misinformation to Llamafile to use as a locally-run LLM. None of these applications fundamentally changes how audiences interact with news or substantially reimagines news workflows. Instead, journalists slot AI in as an aide or assistant.
What futures do journalists envision now?
I asked journalists, news leaders, journalism academics and journalism advocates, “If you could envision the ideal future for the relationship between journalism and AI tools, what would that look like?” The vast majority of interviewees jumped straight to making their current uses better — more accurate transcription, more reliable OCR, summaries without hallucination and so on. Many also mentioned their hopes for increased privacy and security with AI tools.
A small portion of interviewees noted that they don’t want AI and journalism to have a relationship at all. In these journalists’ minds, the cost — financial, social and environmental — of using AI tools is not worth small additions to efficiency or revenue.
Only a few interviewees had a vision that went beyond iterative improvement. Most of them were in leadership or product roles, not daily reporting. These ideas included offering individualized homepages curated by AI, so subscribers can see their most relevant stories first; a new technology development organization made for and by journalists that creates AI tools optimized for investigative work; and AI chatbots on news sites that can answer questions about current events based solely on coverage by that news organization, which have become a reality since I began interviews.
Daily journalists’ focus on iterative improvements to existing AI uses is indicative of a deeper trend towards short-term wins in newsrooms. Yet, the long-term health of the news industry will rely on journalists taking charge of technological futures, and of emerging tools themselves. The constant churn of daily news stunts imaginative technological futuring and leads newsrooms to rely on tools made and controlled by technology companies, stripping journalists of their future professional agency to decide what tools they use, who receives their data and, potentially, what stories they tell. If journalists use directive tools, like AI chatbots that suggest how to move forward with a task, without knowing how the tools generate a directive or what biases they have, then a level of uncertainty is imbued into the journalistic process — and while AI tools cannot be held accountable for this uncertainty, the journalists using them can be.
How can the news industry better facilitate long-term technological futuring?
If enabling journalists to imagine what journalism could look like in the distant future will make journalism more responsive, sustainable, and innovative, then action should be taken now to enable that. One way to do so is for newsroom leaders, news product developers and news strategists to make time for daily news journalists to step out of the constant deluge of news to think about the future, whether through office hours, surveys or communal brainstorming. These conversations might begin like my interviews did — with short-term issues — but journalists will rise to the challenge of thinking outside the box.
There is no silver bullet to understanding how journalism and emerging technology, like AI, will interact in the coming decades, but proactive futuring now could go a long way in putting journalism in the driver’s seat.
Emilia Ruzicka is a data journalist, researcher and editor. They recently graduated with their MA in media, culture, and technology from the University of Virginia. More information about Emilia and their work can be found at emiliaruzicka.com.
