“Modern man’s morning prayer is reading the newspaper. It allows us to situate ourselves daily in our historical world ”. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel had no doubts about what the correct diet was to be informed about what is happening in the world. It must be said that the German philosopher (Stuttgart 1770 – Berlin 1831) lived in an era that did not offer many alternatives. Things then changed, but for almost two centuries that phrase was not questioned, not even with the invention of radio and television. Everything seemed magically crystallized, until the advent of the web, with news sites, social networks, newsletters, a big “all you can read” binge. Driven by the enthusiasm for sharing, we were convinced that the new lay morning prayer was Twitter, Instagram, Facebook or the many other social platforms, that in short, with so much information available it was no longer necessary to search for news because these would have been the find us. To cool the enthusiasm now comes a new study, published by “The International Journal of Press/Politics”, Which warns against binges: reading and watching the news all day can make us less informed (especially about politics) than a more selective diet. In short, “less is more”, as he said Virginia Stagni on Italian Tech.
In a nutshell, the research, which is very rich and worth reading, contrasts two attitudes: the binge – the compulsive click, encouraged by certain newspapers even with clickbait – and the selection of news that, so to speak, tell and they explain those facts that should help us to be more informed citizens about the world in which we live. So far, nothing new: the selection of newsworthy facts has always been one of the fundamental tasks of the journalist’s job. Still, this business has become much more complicated than it was in the past. What has changed? Simple: we have moved from a historical phase in which news was scarce, therefore a precious commodity, to an era of great abundance of information. To get an idea, just think that in the next three years we will produce more information than we have produced in the last three decades.
Journalism, as a paid profession, was born in the United States, around 1830, with the invention of the Penny Press (https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_Press). In increasingly industrialized and literate cities, a group of enlightened publishers are convinced that to reach wider audiences two things are necessary: to reduce the cost of newspapers from 6 cents to one and to pay professionals who can easily find and tell the stories. news (the rare and therefore precious commodity). These publishers were convinced that the compensation of the 5 cents lost on sales would come with the highest print runs and therefore with advertising, as it actually happened. This simple formula created the business model that has kept the press healthy for nearly 200 years. The invention of the Penny Press also had other important qualities, such as the triumph of news over editorials and facts over opinions. The work of journalists is therefore born with specific objectives: to find the facts, select which of them are newsworthy and tell them to an ever wider audience. This compelling story is told by Michael Schudson in a landmark book: “The discovery of the news”.
So it was at least until the progressive and irreversible digitization produced a real explosion of data, with a production of information no longer on a human scale. Today we all produce data continuously, through the web, sensors, smartphones, satellites: the result of all this is a new ecosystem where there is an abundance of information never known before. It is also logical that the role of the journalist, filtering (selecting) and contextualizing the news from this mass of data, has become much more complex than in the past. This excess of information in fact presents us with a challenge that cannot be solved only with the traditional methods of journalism.
No editorial office today would be able, for example, to monitor and extract all the newsworthy information that flows in the real temple in the Twitter or Facebook feeds. Not manually, at least. But technology, which has brought us into the era of big data, has also provided us with the tools to survive the risks of the “big binge”. The new model of journalism cannot ignore, and will increasingly be so, artificial intelligence, an assistant that editorial offices will soon be unable to do without.
AI plays a key role in bringing quality, speed and sustainability back into the modern journalism business model. It is already used in all the fundamental functions of the profession:
1. Newsgathering: algorithms are used to extract data, ie filter irrelevant information and select newsworthy events;
2. Production: intelligent software helps journalists in the packaging of news and, in some cases, thanks to Natural language processing and machine learning, they are able to write the most repetitive and data-based news directly, as is already the case in many fields. , from finance to sport, from weather to news;
3. Distribution: the contents are disseminated and customized through AI software.
If technology changes, as it has always been, what remains are the standard rules of the profession. But if we look ahead it will not escape us how the role of the journalist – if he does not want to be overwhelmed by data (the big binge) – will no longer be just writing stories, telling the news, but also writing editorial algorithms, coded according to professional principles, that applied in real time to the uninterrupted flow of data and information are able to filter irrelevant information and bring out the newsworthy ones. This frontier technology also requires the training of new professionals capable of supporting journalists in the editorial office:
1. Automation editor: plans the workflow so that it is increased thanks to the potential of AI;
2. Computational journalist: applies computer and data science methods to develop editorial algorithms;
3. Newsroom tool manager: coordinates and implements the new platforms and trains journalists in their use;
4. AI ethics editor: ensures transparency and usability of algorithms and data.
The fact that these new professional figures are referred to with English terminology is also a plastic evidence of how far Italian journalism is behind the adoption of AI, which the main editorial offices in the world have been embracing for years. The reasons for this delay are certainly manifold. But it is no coincidence that all the main newspapers that have optimized the production of news thanks to AI are equipped with internal R&D Labs (research and development laboratories) that support the editorial staff in the innovation of production processes. The lack of an R&D culture in our publishing industry could be paid for. Without these software it will soon be impossible to maintain journalism with a sustainable model. The time to innovate is now. In the era of the great information binge, the selection and contextualization of news has once again become a precious asset for the quality and credibility of journalism. As we learned almost 200 years ago with the Penny Press.
To deepen the topic:
Michael Schudson, “The Discovery of the News”, Liguori 1987.
Francesco Marconi, “Newsmakers. Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Journalism”, Columbia University Press 2020.
Aldo Fontanarosa, “Robot Journalists. Artificial Intelligence in the editorial office. News revolution technical tests ”, Ulisse awaits Penelope Editore 2020.