Good morning! Today’s newsletter is brought to you by Esther. Our own Peter Houston is out in Cascais at FIPP Congress over the next few days representing Media Voices – say hi if you see (or hear) him!
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I hate headlines like this because, as we outlined in our Practical AI report, some local publishers have been using AI productively for years. Generative AI, which this piece is actually about, has obviously come a long way in the last 6 months. I wonder though, will the principles of implementation in local newsrooms follow the same trajectory as automated reporting, or will the open nature of these models mean more mistakes are made as well as opportunities?
When Peter spoke to the five publishers we used as case studies in the report about generative AI, all of them were quite cautious. The general consensus seemed to be that they would wait and see where it was needed rather than forcing use cases.
Will that have changed over the past months? I was quite shocked to read that as per a WAN-IFRA survey, half of newsrooms are already deploying generative AI in some form or another. As many have said, there’s huge potential for these tools to free up journalists to do ‘proper’ local reporting rather than pumping out stories for traffic targets. But fast, thoughtless adaptation will inevitably result in cost-cutting and casualties among the very people generative AI could be helping most.
Twipe have brought together some case studies of publishers taking puzzles and games to the next level, including using streaks and stages for gamification, and simply making puzzles available offline. Nice to see some examples that aren’t just the New York Times, but I still don’t know of many smaller publishers trying it (if you know any, tell us!)
A fun, beautifully written long read from the Guardian about the history of podcasting through a UK lens. Far more entertaining than reading about Spotify layoffs.
The ‘Pressing Matters’ paper finds that the market power of platforms like Meta and Google is ‘significantly overstated’, and that existing repayment mechanisms in place in Australia (and being adopted by others) could both stunt tech platforms’ development and do long-term harm to consumer interests.
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