‘Anti-scale’ and how to save journalism in an automated world

The rise of artificial intelligence in journalism has sparked urgent questions about the industry’s future direction and its relationship with technology.

Current state of journalism: Trust in news media has hit concerning lows, with only 32% of Americans believing journalism provides fair and accurate reporting.

• Traditional metrics of industry health, including journalist employment and local news coverage, have declined significantly over two decades
• News organizations have repeatedly sought technological solutions to their digital challenges
• The current focus on generative AI represents the latest attempt to find a technological fix

AI’s limitations in journalism: Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT present fundamental problems for news organizations, despite claims about their potential to automate content creation.

• LLMs are prone to “hallucination,” generating plausible but potentially false information
• Recent surveys show 80% of Americans express concern about news organizations using AI
• The majority of Americans oppose AI use in newsrooms except for language translation

The scale problem: The journalism industry’s pursuit of scale-driven strategies has proven increasingly problematic in the digital age.

• AI-generated content can be produced at minimal cost (approximately $0.002 per 1,000 words)
• The flood of AI-generated content threatens to overwhelm legitimate journalism
• Traditional scale-based approaches to news distribution are becoming unsustainable

The anti-scale alternative: A new approach focused on human connection and community engagement offers a potential path forward.

• Emphasis on “Actual Experience” (AE) involving direct human interaction and observation
• Focus on building trust through relationships rather than automated content generation
• Development of tools that help journalists foster digital communities across fragmented platforms

Technical challenges ahead: The transition to an anti-scale approach requires rethinking fundamental aspects of digital journalism.

• Need for new metrics beyond traditional pageviews and click rates
• Development of products that clearly differentiate human-created journalism from AI content
• Tools to help journalists navigate and build communities across diverse digital platforms

Looking forward: The anti-scale movement represents a potential paradigm shift in how journalism approaches technology and audience engagement, though significant questions remain about implementation and measurement of success in this new model.