The newest "AI is taking our media jobs" screeds

A week after The Guardian wrote a shortish piece breathlessly touting new writing AI, specifically a program called GPT-3, The Atlantic takes a deep dive in the shallow end of the pool.

At least Renée DiResta gives us unedited, albeit excerpted, material to read (the Guardian only had edited slices):

In addition to the potential for AI-generated false stories, there’s a simultaneously scary and exciting future where AI-generated false stories are the norm. The rise of the software engineer has given us the power to create new kinds of spaces: virtual reality and augmented reality are now possible, and the “Internet of things” is increasingly entering our homes. This past year, we’ve seen a new type of art: that which is created by algorithms and not humans. In this future, AI-generated content will continue to become more sophisticated, and it will be increasingly difficult to differentiate it from the content that is created by humans. One of the implications of the rise in AI-generated content is that the public will have to contend with the reality that it will be increasingly difficult to differentiate between generated content and human-generated content.

As for the horrors of AI being used for propaganda writing? Well, if Russian trolls can be replaced with AI bots to "flood the zone" even more, or capitalist businesses in America doing the same to We the People, that is troublesome to a degree.

But nowhere near the breathlessness degree.

As for letters to the editor? Ms. DiResta, astroturfing campaigns opened that barn door years if not decades ago, and better-staffed newspapers regularly screwed the pooch.

Moving beyond the media angle, though, which is somewhat what the Guardian does? It claims editing on its AI piece took less than a human piece. That, in turn, makes me wonder what level of dreck its writers, or freelance op-ed submitters, actually turn in.

Other than the narrow world of yet more media-industry job losses, when I look at this, am I worried? No. 

I do worry there, and that many companies like Craphouse and Dead Fucking Media would use stuff like this without much editing.

Twosiderism, the MSM, and Kool-Aid drinking

(Sorry that I had originally published this, and backdate published it, before it was ready.)

 I've used that last phrase elsewhere about people like Aaron Maté, Max Blumenthal, Mark Ames, Jordan Chariton, Yasha Levine, Matt Taibbi, and others.

They're a loose cluster of people who claim to think outside the box of what I call the bipartisan foreign policy establishment here in the U.S.

However, they carry this to an extreme, and that's the twosiderism on their own. Especially on things like China's Uyghur detention camps, they're willing to drink Xi Jinping's bullshit or whatever just because the U.S. foreign policy establishment calls him out for this. (As does most the Western foreign policy establishment.)

Well, beyond two wrongs not making a right, this is not really outside-the-box thinking. Instead, it's creating your own new box.

On things like the New York Post's story about Hunter and Joe Biden, Glenn Greenwald has been a willing member. And, he too is wrong.

Yes, it's Vox, Ezra-land, but Jay Rosen, who is interviewed there by Sean Illing, isn't Ezra Klein.

Rosen just mentions the Post piece in passing as part of a larger issue. And that is that political journalists have for decades more and more treated political reporting as insider baseball. 

There are two other problems he mentions.

One is commercial pressures. Here, the equivalent of the old "if it bleeds it leads" would be "if Trump tweets he leads."

The second? The MSM's long desire for "the view from nowhere" or "equal time." Well, on broadcast media, the Fairness Doctrine hasn't existed since Reagan. Print media has never been bound by any such thing. Electronic media of the Internet era of course isn't.

Rosen does say that leaders in the MSM have adapted a little bit to Trump exploiting the "fairness" issue. Not as much as they need to, but somewhat. The "if Trump tweets he leads"? In their DNA, though.

To the degree they are truly playing inside baseball, the Times etc. deserve a callout. But, where are the stenos calling out the Post slouching more toward Gomorrah? Or the Wall Street Journal making its news pages a harbor of coronavirus conspiracy theories, herd immunity puffery and antimasking?

The Snooze, aka Dallas Morning News, slouches further on its adhole

 I hadn't popped open a Snooze in a while, but I did a week ago.

Their Thursday exurban edition continues to get worse and worse.

COUNTING obits, just over 3 1/2 pages on a 32-page issue, or 14 percent. Err, my math is bad. That would be just over 10 percent, or else I meant 4 1/2 pages.

NO ads in the front section other than a half-page house. NONE.

They should be pulling a page from Advance and not delivering to stores and racks certain days of the week. If you insist on keeping Mondays so people out in the country can read your necessary Dallas Cowgirls coverage, still, Tuesday and Thursday at a minimum are cuttable outside the core area of Dallas, Ellis, Rockwall, Collin, Denton and Hunt counties.

Three weeks later? Thursday, Nov. 4 after the election? 4 1/2 or so on 34 pages.

Not getting the Gainesville Daily Register, part 2

So, in my previous post I talked about the weirdness and inflexibility of print deadlines at the Gainesville Daily Register.

Here are some other things, both as an individual paper and as a CNHI outlet, I don't get about it.

First thing I don't get is its lack of coverage on energy issues. Cooke County is in the top 30 percent of the state's counties in both oil and gas production, and yet, it does basically nothing in terms of industry news other than an occasional press report from the Texas Railroad Commission, with those pressers only having statewide, or on occasion, regional info.

Second is their "wire" coverage.

They regularly run stuff from the Texas Trib. That's fine. But, they've occasional run an AP piece. Occasionally as in once every three-four weeks. Are they paying for an AP account that's not being used? Or is another CNHI paper breaking AP contract by redistributing? (Wouldn't surprise me. Still not sure who is cheaper, Can't Need Huge Investment or Craphouse.) Or are they copying stories off the AP News website?  (Which, it should be noted, does NOT have a "copywrited" note on either the home page or on individual story pages.) I suppose it is possible that AP has added an a la carte offering to its system, but I highly doubt it.

Third is some of their local "advances."

For the unfamiliar, an "advance" is when a small daily, usually on the Friday or weekend edition, having gotten an agenda for the school board, city council, or county commission meeting, summarizes top items of potential action, should people want to attend, or at least know what to watch out for.

A while back, on a commissioners court advance, the header and lede graf was about changing the speed limit on a couple of county roads.

Really?

The story didn't even mention what, for residents in unincorporated areas, IMO was definitely the biggest item — the county possibly enacting a burn ban. (Commissioners didn't, but, nonetheless, IMO, the potential for that was the bigger item.)

I mean, I'm not perfect, and per any laziness being being issue No. 1, I am a bit slothful at times, too.

But, why?

For that matter, given that they run NO national advertising other than that CNHI national ad about that Alabama golf course that must be OWNED by the Alabama pension system, if not CNHI or Raycom directly, as often as it runs, why are they a daily? A Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday triweekly of 12-12-12 on pages would give almost the same number of pages as currently and cut their third-party press bill and delivery driver bill.

Or, if you're going to stay a five-day daily? Especially if you're just charging 50 cents still? Whack it to eight pages. (10 on Fridays in football, including your two football booster pages.) As part of that, stop insisting you must have two full pages of classifieds, since in most cases, after you subtract house ads and massive amounts of black background space around legals, you only have 1 1/4 pages of classifieds. From an insider point of view, it looks gimmicky, cheesy and crappy.

Drop text on top of any classifieds that spill from the first page. Bigger papers than you do this. Also? Get rid of the four pages of TV guide on Wednesdays. Nobody reads that any more, unless they're at the high end even of average newspaper reader range. (You're allowed to keep them if you get an advertiser to sponsor them.)

An eight-pager is quicker to produce, has a smaller print bill and has a smaller mail bill to non-local subscribers who don't do digital only. No brainer all the way around.

And, Mineral Wells is the same population, though Palo Pinto County is smaller than Cooke. And Cee Nothing Hear Infintesimally found enough brains to make it a semiweekly. (I would have gone triweekly, as I suggest for Gainesville.)

The newest cheap-assedness from Wick Communications

 Regular readers here may recall that I've written about Wick, and the cheap-assedness angle, before.

The newest? From JournalismJobs, this "journalism product manager" position.

First, some snootiness that seems kind of typical of Wick.

No, the job title is not a typo. (If you don't know what a typo is, stop reading now.)

Then, the job itself.

Wick Communications is expanding its NABUR initiative, which combines community journalism with reader engagement via our own social media platform. NABUR, or Neighborhood Assisted Bureau Reporting, offers aspects of investigative reporting/feel-good local news combined on a site similar to Nextdoor or Facebook Groups. This project is funded in part by the Google News Initiative.

Basically, that sounds like a rewrite of what gets posted on FB Groups. Groups dedicated to an individual city can be a boon, but they can usually be a rumor-mongering pile of shit, based on personal past experience at multiple newspapers.

Second, "feel good" news is nowhere near investigative reporting.

Third, if it IS your own proprietary social media platform, how many people are members of it?

Fourth, per what I said above, Sierra Vista's site sounds like the rumors, or innuendos, are monged indeed.

Fifth, again, I wouldn't mind going to Montrose, but ... again, I'd want to know why Californication stopped there, assuming its population is still flat, and other things.

Sixth? Like other small former dailies, they're still doing a daily e-edition. Why? In all likelihood, you will never again be a daily print paper. You're wasting staff time and energy. And, if they're really still a five day daily in print, per my original post, why? (They cut from six days a week this spring.)

Unfortunately, their paywall is so hard I can't tell if they're still five days in print, or just five days in e-editions. Nor can I tell how many pages they're pushing.

GRACKLES INVADE NORTH TEXAS

But, it's not QUITE "Children of the Corn."

But ...

STOP THE PRESSES!!!

If this is your lead story, as a pullout, with not one but two photos on the front page, you're at a small daily paper that should either
A. Consider running a Trib partnership story on the front, if you have to
B. Consider an AP story if you have a membership (that issue may be "open" per what I know) or
C. Consider going non-daily.

Knowing the cut-rate chain ownership?
B. May be iffy because of what is in parenthesis in combination with occasional inside content
A. Might turn up corporate noses, but if you do a story below just the grackles lead photo as wild art, why not
C. Will never be done as long as an Alabama dime can be milked.

If you're the shorthanded editor, whether or not you're familiar with the reality of end of summer/start of fall great-tailed grackles in North Texas, I'm sorry for your situation. I'm also sorry per other things.

As for that reality?

Grackles as an "urban invader" will find some swarming spot in any town of more than 5,000 people.

And, no, they don't just swarm at cheap places, or high food-litter places, like Walmart.

When I lived in the Metromess, one of their top swarms was along Oak Lawn, most heavily near the intersection with Turtle Creek Boulevard. In the Best Southwest, they semi-swarmed DeSoto's Town Center area because of the Tom Thumb across the street and the proximity of Ten Mile Creek.

Oh, north Texas newspaper? Those aren't common grackles. They're great-tailed grackles.

And bird experts or semi-experts, whether for small newspapers or Aggie state Extension pages? Stop calling them things like "pests" just because, like ravens, they're smart enough and opportunistic enough to massively expand their urban range.

Finally, said person who wrote this is not only the editor but also the general manager of this daily paper. It's the Gainesville Register. The Peter Principle runs deep. OR it runs cheap at CNHI.