How News Organizations should approach AI

Marty Baron, former executive editor of the Washington Post has published a book on his experience there, "Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos, and THE WASHINGTON POST.  Among some very interesting points he made in an interview with CNN are some suggestions on how news organizations should approach A.I. 

Baron said:  “Generative AI poses huge risks but also offers some intriguing opportunities. I think we’re all familiar with the risks, especially when AI pulls so-called information out of the ether. The result is what are typically called "hallucinations." More appropriately they should be called "fabrications."

 

“Then he added, “But there are ways to introduce some efficiencies in newsroom operations with the careful use of generative AI. Reporters and editors are burdened with all sorts of tasks they didn’t have to perform in a previous era: search- and social-friendly headlines, photo selection, metadata, alerts, multiple versions of stories throughout the day, and the list goes on. The use of AI that draws upon a news organization's own archival content — and fresh reporting by its own staff — can potentially help immensely in time management for reporters and editors.”

There are other issues and challenges the media faces in these dark days of Trump and the GOP, but these suggestions are useful to the media in general, and for that matter to ThinkTech.

Headlines.  We’re still doing this manually, and our titles are usually written by our show hosts.  We know how important the headlines are so over time we hope to set up systems that will generate and vet more appealing and provocative headlines.

Photo selection.  We use a variety of sources, especially including the search of our own archives, the generation of graphics using the AI in Discord / MidJourney, as well as the improved AI search functions that are being rolled out on our various stock photo sites.

Metadata.  We have metadata on all our productions, and we use a really fast AI search system on the Find Your Favorites on demand page of our website to enable users to find them right away.  We’re also planning to develop a metadata system to search for relevant video and audio clips on our video editing software.

Alerts.  We send out our daily Email Advisories.  Much of the content is generated by our Filemaker system.  We also send out what we call Flash message alerts, the text for which is generated automatically, and we’re also working on automating the content selection and timing of those alerts.

Multiple versions of stories through the day.  Yes, a great idea.  If the Washington Post can do this so can we, and we are working on repeating our best shows and commentaries throughout the broadcast day.

Drawing on the organization’s own archival content.  In addition to our photo archives, all our talk shows and all our hosts and guests are in our Filemaker archival application. We’ve been doing this for some years, and it has been very valuable for us.  The newest versions of Filemaker are incorporating AI, and that will make these archive and retrieval functions even more powerful.

AI is changing the world, and it has every prospect of changing the ThinkTech world. We’ll be watching the advances, reporting on them, and implementing them in our systems going forward.

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