Journalism Is Now Spelled Journ-AI-sm
March 24, 2025
Another dinobaby blog post. Eight decades and still thrilled when I point out foibles.
When I worked at a “real” newspaper, I enjoyed listening to “real” journalists express their opinions on everything. Some were experts in sports and knew little details about Louisville basketball. Others were “into” technology and tracked the world of gadgets — no matter how useless — and regaled people at lunch with descriptions of products that would change everything. Everything? Yeah. I heard about the rigors of journalism school. The need to work on either the college radio station or the college newspaper. These individuals fancied themselves Renaissance men and women. That’s okay, but do bean counters need humans to “cover” the news?
The answer is, “Probably not.”
“Italian Newspaper Says It Has Published World’s First AI-Generated Edition” suggests that “real” humans covering the news may face a snow leopard or Maui ‘Alauahio moment. The article reports:
An Italian newspaper has said it is the first in the world to publish an edition entirely produced by artificial intelligence. The initiative by Il Foglio, a conservative liberal daily, is part of a month-long journalistic experiment aimed at showing the impact AI technology has “on our way of working and our days”, the newspaper’s editor, Claudio Cerasa, said.
The smart software is not just spitting out “real” news. The system does “headlines, quotes, and even the irony.” Wow. Irony from smart software.
According to the “real” journalistic who read the stories in the paper:
The articles were structured, straightforward and clear, with no obvious grammatical errors. However, none of the articles published in the news pages directly quote any human beings.
That puts Il Foglio ahead of the Smartnews’ articles. Wow, are some of those ungrammatical and poorly structured? In my opinion, I would toss in the descriptor “incoherent.”
What do I make of Il Folio’s trial? That’s an easy question:
- If the smart software is good enough and allows humans to be given an opportunity to find their future elsewhere, smart software is going to be used. A few humans might be rehired if revenues tank, but the writing is on the wall of the journalism school
- Bean counters know one thing: Counting beans. If the smart software generates financial benefits, the green eye shade crowd will happily approve licensing smart software.
- Readers may not notice or not care. Headline. First graf. Good to go.
Will the future pundits, analysts, marketing specialists, PR professionals, and LLM trainers find the journalistic joy? Being unhappy at work and paying bills is one thing; being happy doing news knowing that smart software is coming for the journalism jobs is another.
I would not return to college to learn how to be a “real” journalist. I would stay home, eat snacks, and watch game show re-runs. Good enough life plan, right?
Why worry? Il Foglio is just doing a small test.
Stephen E Arnold, March 24, 2025
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