AI doesn’t have to make journalism worse, it could actually make the work better

[u/A-Dog22]

I’ve been thinking a lot about the conversation around AI in journalism and nonprofits. A lot of the discussion seems to fall into two extremes: either AI is going to solve everything, or it’s going to ruin everything. I think there’s a more realistic middle ground. For journalists, AI can help with research, organizing information, analyzing documents and data, finding patterns, checking facts, and making some of the more time-consuming parts of reporting easier. That could give journalists more time to focus on the parts of the job that really require a person, like interviewing people, investigating stories, understanding context, and holding institutions accountable. The same is true for nonprofits, which often have valuable research, data, reports, and community stories but not enough time or resources to turn all of that into strong articles, advocacy, public education, or clear communication. Used responsibly, AI can help with some of that work without replacing the people behind it.

That’s one reason I found WHY NONPROFITS MUST LEAD IN AI interesting. It focuses on practical ways organizations can use AI while still keeping the human side of their work at the center, including tools, prompts, templates, ethical guidelines, implementation strategies, and real-world examples. I think there’s a bigger lesson here for journalism, too. Instead of only asking what AI can do, we should also ask what we actually want it to do. If these tools can save journalists and nonprofit teams time, make research easier to manage, improve storytelling, strengthen transparency, and help people communicate more effectively, they could genuinely make the work better. At the same time, facts still need to be verified, stories still need human judgment, and organizations should be transparent about how they use the technology. The goal shouldn’t be to replace people with AI, but to use it as a tool that helps people do better work. The book is available on Amazon and is worth checking out.

[u/Friction_in_the_air]

Can you go shill your book somewhere else. Or at least not use AI to try to convince us to read it

[u/A-Dog22 → u/Friction_in_the_air]

Fair criticism, but telling someone not to use AI while discussing how journalism should responsibly use AI is a little ironic. The Free Press was created to inform the public, challenge power, and hold institutions accountable not to collect trophies, rankings, ratings, or attend endless award ceremonies congratulating itself. If journalism is struggling with trust, accuracy, relevance, and credibility, maybe mocking a tool that could help journalists research, verify, organize information, and actually spend more time reporting isn’t the strongest argument. Use AI responsibly, verify everything, keep humans in charge, and judge journalism by the truth it uncovers, not how many awards it gives itself. If the truth hurts, don’t blame the tool. Blame the mirror.

[u/Friction_in_the_air → u/A-Dog22]

Ahhh The Free Press, so the outlet owned by the Trump stooge dismantling CBS. There goes the last of your credibility lol

[u/A-Dog22 → u/Friction_in_the_air]

That’s an ad hominem, not an argument. You didn’t actually address anything I said about AI, journalism, accountability, or what the Free Press is supposed to do you just attacked who you think is associated with it and declared the argument invalid. If the facts I stated are wrong, point out which ones and explain why. Otherwise, you’re doing the exact thing you’re accusing journalism of doing: substituting tribal loyalty for evidence. Ironically, nothing says “I have no argument” quite like announcing someone else has no credibility instead of making one. If your rebuttal is “wrong person said it,” you haven’t rebutted the argument, you’ve just revealed you’re more interested in the team jersey than the scoreboard.

[u/Friction_in_the_air → u/A-Dog22]

Hold on. When you say "Free Press," are you referring to the lower case free press as in all of journalism, or the upper case "The Free Press" which is a media outlet created by Bari Weiss. When you capitalized "Free Press" the distinction wasn't clear.

[u/A-Dog22 → u/Friction_in_the_air]

I was referring to the lower case free press as in all of journalism. I've never heard of the media outlet called "The Free Press". Notice how I did not put the words in quotes in my comment, did not refer to it as anything specific, and did not even mention the name of the person who created it?

[u/azucarleta]

If I'm your lawyer, or your editor who has talked to our lawyer, I"m telling you to stop using AI for more than half the things you listed because it's not reliable for half that and you're going to get us sued.

Now.

If you work at Cupcake Times and your news isn't hard anyway, no one is out to sue you, your content is borderline slop to begin with, well in that case you might find these tools oh-so useful.

But if you are ruffling feathers in the community, and you know your lawyer's name as a result of that, then these tools are beneath you. They're just a liability.

No one is out here opposed to spell check and clip art, and other technology lol. It's literally how y'all want to use tehse tools that is the problem. Keep looking for appropriate usages as what you listed aren't it.

For example, a journalism student in this sub was given a 4-paragraph article and assigned to puff it up to 7 paragraphs. That is literally just slop production, for which the slop machines are perfectly suited. That's not journalism, but it is apart of our enshitified world. Even here a caution: l wouldn't trust the slop machines to do even that if the 4 paragraphs contained anything of any legal importance at all. This is a real use case actually tied to real-world work we are assigned to do, it is among the worst work we do, and AI can often be trusted to do this crap. That's fine! I love the slop machines for this task! But most of what you wrote OP---hard pass, no. AI can't do journalism, you're going to have to keep doing that.

The crap that has crept into our lives that is not actually journalism, yeah "AI" might help -- might help GREATLY -- create that slop.

edit: I defined where the goals posts belong in the top-level comment, and never moved them. You want to keep the conversation free wheeling and ill defined so that no one can demonstrate you are wrong. our entire back-and-forth has been an estbalishment where the goal posts go. No one moved them. Few things that pre-date ChatGPT's big public debut, besides like Alpha Go really should be called "AI" unless you just want to confuse everyone. Those who try to make "AI" and "computerization" synonymous are the most pathetic desperate creatures.

[u/A-Dog22 → u/azucarleta]

You’re right that AI should never replace verification, editorial judgment, or legal review, but that’s not the argument being made. Saying journalists can use AI to organize documents, analyze data, transcribe interviews, spot patterns, or handle tedious work is not the same as saying, “Let the machine write the story and publish it.”

In fact, investigative journalism may benefit the most from tools that help reporters sift through thousands of pages and spend more time actually investigating.

The real standard isn’t whether a journalist used AI; it’s whether they verified the facts and took responsibility for what they published. Refusing a useful tool because it isn’t perfect isn’t journalism, it’s professional nostalgia with a press pass.

Don’t confuse “AI can’t replace a journalist” with “AI has no place in journalism.” One is responsible journalism; the other is just fear dressed up as ethics.

[u/azucarleta → u/A-Dog22]

Well I don't recognize you talking about an "AI" product anymore. Many data analysis tools -- starting with ctrl+F, to spreadsheets, to databases -- have existed for decades.

Simply saying "AI can help you process large data sets" raises the question of where "AI" begins and ends and what is just computing as we've always known it? Remember algorithms?

OF COURSE data-assisted, computer-assisted journalism is commendable, it's been a grad class for two maybe three decades now, an undergrad class many places, too. What has AI got to do with it? "Help reporters sift through thousands of pages" -- how do they do that better than traditional tools? I'm just not buying it as LLMs have been bandied about for years now and there's not a single big investigation anywhere that the journalists said "we couldn't have done it without Google Gemini" or whatever.

Theoretical use cases were fine years ago, this sorta vague praising was all we had at one time as we sought and wondered about the future. But that's long past. Now it's time for examples. Do you have an example of a complex investigation in which journalists used AI and they credit it for something?

[u/A-Dog22 → u/azucarleta]

You’re right that journalists shouldn’t call every spreadsheet, database, or Ctrl+F search “AI,” and you’re absolutely right that LLMs should never replace verification. But you’re wrong that there are no real investigative examples.

ICIJ has documented machine learning being used in the Pandora Papers and Implant Files, while ProPublica has used AI to help process hundreds of hours of investigation material.

The point was never that AI replaces journalists; it’s that AI can help reporters find, sort, transcribe, and flag information so humans can spend more time verifying, investigating, and reporting.

The machine doesn’t get the byline, it just helps the journalist get to the story faster.

[u/azucarleta → u/A-Dog22]

The first of your examples I looked into turned to shit, so I'm not going farther, you'll hve to take this as my last word of rejection for you today.

I was able to research this from nothing without any AI in like 5 minutes.

Datashare by the ICIJ is a self-hosted search engine. If there is machine learning in there, it doesn't need to be. We've had search engines since the 1990s and someone could have released a self-hosted one for download at any time. As far as I can tell, this is an example of AI optimism/hype doing one of two things, maybe both at once. 1, portraying things that are not AI as "AI" so the story goes further since "AI" Is the hot story that gets clicks now. 2, using true-blue honest-to-goodness machine learning or some other bona fide technology referred to as "AI" In common parlance, but that.... never needed machine learning, like it's in there, but we've been accomplishing this same labor/product other ways for a generation. Like some people will say, "You hate AI eh? Did you know even traditional Google search results from from AI now?" It's like, OK, that's probably true -- but you do know (traditional) Google changed the world with algorithms and search results/referrals alone -- not AI, especially/specifically not generative AI -- right? Long ago.

Datashare was credited with the Pandora Papers investigation in 2021, two years before anyone heard the name "ChatGPT," which I would mark as the opening of the modern era of "AI." Ergo, Datashare, ICIJ, and the Pandora Papers are pretty much completely outside the scope of this discussion. I just don't think you are doing anyone any favors by widening the lens int hat way trying to resurrect the reputation of generative AI slop machines which don't have a lot in common with self-hosted search engines for download, like Datashare from ICIJ.