From the Newsroom: More predictions for 2024

Journalists’ fixation on objectivity will shift to transparency this coming year. The objectivity debate was long overdue and needs to continue in every newsroom. But if kept inside our newsrooms, it can distract from an even bigger imperative: to talk about all aspects of how we do our work, directly with our readers, listeners, viewers — the people we serve. If a reporter has a point of view or a publication promotes a certain perspective, does it matter as much as making sure the perspective is overt and clear, and the reader can tell?

The need for more transparency in news is growing for multiple reasons: the collapse of locally owned newspapers, the consolidation of news ownership and control, the spread of philanthropic donations from public good nonprofits to commercial companies and, above all, the ability of artificial intelligence to generate misinformation and disinformation in massive volume and difficult-to-detect forms.

Reputation is trust. And transparency creates an exchange where trust can grow. In journalism, that merits our biggest resolutions for 2024.

— Sue Cross, Institute for Nonprofit News

Small newsrooms adopt AI

Throughout our two years of work on AP’s Local News AI Initiative, funded by the Knight Foundation, we’ve come to this general observation: Smaller newsrooms are hungry for automation and artificial intelligence.

In March 2022, our survey showed some news managers were talking about AI, but not many were using it. Fast forward to 2023: As ChatGPT gained traction, even more smaller newsrooms started paying attention to AI. Local news managers who initially brushed off our requests to participate in our prior survey wrote back to us and asked for help with AI.

My prediction for 2024 is that smaller newsrooms will widely adopt some sort of AI tool into their workflow. My favorite example is automated transcription. Any newsroom using one of the many commercially available transcription tools is taking advantage of AI.

Some newsrooms may choose to go further and adopt ChatGPT, Claude, Bard or some other large language model-powered chat tool into their workflow. For example, a journalist looking to craft a catchy headline may ask a generative AI tool to offer suggestions. It could be as simple as that.

My hope is that in 2024, journalists at smaller newsrooms learn to adopt cutting-edge generative AI tools responsibly, paying attention to the significant risks involved in their usage. Adopting AI will be as critical to smaller newsrooms as it was to shift away from typewriters to computers. Based on the enormous response we’ve seen to generative AI in 2023, I predict 2024 will be a year of broad adoption of AI in smaller newsrooms.

— Ernest Kung, the Associated Press

Partisan media rises

I think we’re near a breaking point where media critics, journalists, foundation funders, policymakers and scholars can no longer assume partisan journalism occupies a marginal part of the news sphere. As partisan journalism becomes more central to U.S. political life, I want to make three claims about this process that hover between hopes and hopeful predictions.

First, I think we are poised to see progressives start investing significantly more in partisan media aimed at reaching popular audiences. For decades, the right has been building a media infrastructure — from talk radio to Fox News to YouTube stars — pitched to groups well beyond conservative elites. While the left and center-left, too, have a vibrant partisan sphere — think Democracy Now, New York Review of Books, Jacobin — their resources are more focused on a highly educated and ideologically committed base.

Second, as partisan media becomes more central to politics, we will need to think about it with more nuance, seeing it as more than a menacing rival to professional journalism. There are various norms and features partisan media might adopt. Partisan outlets could value factual accuracy and good-faith engagement with opposing perspectives. Of course, many do not. Still, institutions have a role to play in setting the stage for what kinds of partisan media thrive.

Lastly, a more influential partisan media doesn’t need to spell the decline of nonpartisan journalism. Professional journalists are grappling with a number of crises, including a financial crisis, abysmal levels of reported trust among conservatives and independents, and a surging debate over whether objectivity or something similar should remain a cardinal value.

Facing the growth of partisan media head-on might help with these latter two crises.

— Anthony Nadler, Ursinus College

Local news and local history

In 2024, the heart of local news strategy boils down to the question: Do you care about place, or not?

The answer to that question is, deeply, yes. That calls for a very different, and I’d argue more challenging, way of doing journalism than nationally focused organizations with interests in “local.” Authentically local journalism outlets already know this.

I’ve been saying for a while now that journalists must use history as a reporting tool. I agree with some smart colleagues that journalism would benefit from syncing more with public libraries and with humanities-focused organizations in general. But in 2024, with increasing investment in local news and particularly of efforts that are led by and that center people of color, a new generation of local and civic media will embrace new roles as place-makers themselves. The history they tell while doing so — the way they communicate place — will be very different from their predecessors.

I believe the fields of public history and journalism are shifting toward each other. In 2024, if local news outlets and civic media leaders are proactive in that shift, they’ll find new publics to serve — and a new generation of public historians waiting for them, too.

— Logan Jaffe, ProPublica