In 2017, artificial intelligence will slowly but surely make its presence known, both within newsrooms and to readers.
In newsrooms, bots will start to produce more stories where structured data is readily available — think game recaps, weather run downs, and overviews of how the stock market performed. This will free up resources and reduce costs. Robots will analyze complex editorial content of all lengths, and provide feedback to the humans sitting behind the keyboard. Much like how Netflix used data to help fine-tune House of Cards, news organizations will have the opportunity to adjust editorial narratives to make stories more engaging.
Google and Facebook will use artificial intelligence to identify fake news and help stop the spread of it.
Apple, Google, and Facebook will merge their fragmented audio, search, and news ecosystems while leveraging artificial intelligence to make recommendations across content types. For example, if you read an article in The Economist, you might get recommended a similar episode of the Planet Money podcast. This approach keeps users engaged with their devices and services longer…something that is financially advantageous for Apple, Google, and Facebook.
Bots will replace publishers’ iOS and Android apps. Data shows that nobody uses publisher apps, while messaging apps are insanely popular and growing larger everyday. Publishers would be smart to migrate resources away from maintaining unused apps and redirect them towards the development of bots that push the most relevant news directly to the screens that readers most frequently look at.
Newsrooms should embrace artificial intelligence, just as they have embraced other technological tools. AI will help us become better storytellers while simultaneously ensuring our audiences are the right ones.
Matt Karolian is director of audience engagement at The Boston Globe.
Joanne Lipman The year of the drone, really
Andrew Ramsammy Rise of the rebel journalist
Lee Glendinning A call for great editing
Megan H. Chan Cultural reporting goes mainstream
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen News after advertising may look like news before advertising
Nushin Rashidian A rise in high-price, high-value subscriptions
Maria Bustillos “It’s true — I saw it on Facebook”
Almar Latour Thanks, #fakenews
Sydette Harry Facing journalism’s history
Mandy Velez The audience is the source and the story
Claire Wardle Verification takes center stage
Michael Kuntz Trust is the new click
Melody Kramer Radically rethinking design
Vivian Schiller Tested like never before
Taylor Lorenz “Selfie journalism” becomes a thing
Scott Dodd Nonprofits team up for impact
Liz McMillen The year of deep insights
Tim Griggs The year we stop taking sides
Lam Thuy Vo The primary source in the age of mechanical multiplication
Steve Henn The next revolution is voice
Samantha Barry Messaging apps go mainstream
Margarita Noriega From pinning tweets to tweeting pins
Tanya Cordrey The resurgence of reach
Nathalie Malinarich Making it easy
Tressie McMillan Cottom A path through the media’s coming legitimacy crisis
Olivia Ma The year collaboration beats competition
Erin Pettigrew A year of reflection in tech
Erin Millar The bottom falls out of Canadian media
Eric Nuzum Podcasting stratifies into hard layers
Priya Ganapati Mobile websites are ready for reinvention
Reyhan Harmanci Bear witness — but then what?
Millie Tran International expansion without colonial overtones
Mathew Ingram The Faustian Facebook dance continues
Julia Beizer Building a coherent core identity
Laura Walker Authentic voices, not fake news
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Earn trust by working for (and with) readers
David Weigel A test for online speech
Guy Raz Inspiration and hope will matter more than ever
Amy Webb Journalism as a service
Mary Meehan Feeling blue in a red state
Renée Kaplan Pure reach has reached its limit
Rubina Madan Fillion Snapchat grows up
Sarah Wolozin Virtual reality on the open web
Sam Ford The year we talk about our awful metrics
Doris Truong Connecting with diverse perspectives
Mike Ragsdale A smarter information diet
Matt Karolian AI improves publishing
Sarah Marshall Focusing on the why of the click
Tim Herrera The safe space of service journalism
M. Scott Havens Quality advertising to pair with quality content
Carrie Brown We won’t do enough
Ryan McCarthy Platforms grow up or grow more toxic
Dannagal G. Young The return of the gatekeepers
Cory Haik Navigating power in Trump’s America
Ole Reißmann Un-faking the news
Corey Ford The year of the rebelpreneur
Alice Antheaume A new test for French media
Adam Thomas The coming collaboration across Europe
Rebekah Monson Journalism is community-as-a-service
Geetika Rudra Journalism is community
Molly de Aguiar Philanthropists galvanize around news
Dan Colarusso Let’s make live video we can love
Matt Waite The people running the media are the problem
Jim Friedlich A banner year for venture philanthropy
Mary Walter-Brown Getting comfortable asking for money
Aja Bogdanoff Comments start pulling their weight
Ariane Bernard Better data about your users
Jon Slade Trusted news, at a premium
Mario García Virtual reality on mobile leaps forward
Jonathan Stray A boom in responsible conservative media
Hillary Frey Forests need to burn to regrow
Andrea Silenzi Podcasts dive into breaking news analysis
Zizi Papacharissi Distracted journalism looks in the mirror
Amie Ferris-Rotman Вслед за Россией
Ashley C. Woods Local journalism will fight a new fight
David Chavern Fake news gets solved
AX Mina 2017 is for the attention innovators
Rachel Schallom Stop flying over the flyover states
Moreno Cruz Osório The year of transparency in Brazilian journalism
Andrew Losowsky Building our own communities
Libby Bawcombe Kids board the podcast train
Annemarie Dooling UGC as a path out of the bubble
Gabriel Snyder The aberration of 20th-century journalism
Kathleen Kingsbury Print as a premium offering
Mira Lowe News literacy, bias, and “Hamilton”
Asma Khalid The year of the newsy podcast
Emily Goligoski Incorporating audience feedback at scale
Nicholas Quah Podcasting’s coming class war
Francesco Marconi The year of augmented writing
Ken Schwencke Disaggregation and collection
Errin Haines Chaos or community?
Rachel Sklar Women are going to get loud
Robert Hernandez History will exclude you, again
Sara M. Watson There is no neutral interface
Anita Zielina The sales funnel reaches (and changes) the newsroom
Bill Keller A healthy skepticism about data
Jeremy Barr A terrible year for Tiers B through D
Sue Schardt Objectivity, fairness, balance, and love
P. Kim Bui The year journalism teaches again
Burt Herman Local news gets interesting
Dhiya Kuriakose The year of digital detoxing
Andrew Haeg The year of listening
S.P. Sullivan Baking transparency into our routines
Richard Tofel The country doesn’t trust us — but they do believe us
Amy O'Leary Not just covering communities, reaching them
Umbreen Bhatti A sense of journalists’ humanity
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Truthiness in private spaces
Katie Zhu The year of minority media
Elizabeth Jensen Trust depends on the details
Alexis Lloyd Public trust for private realities
Emi Kolawole From empathy to community
Cindy Royal Preparing the digital educator-scholar hybrid
Andy Rossback The year of the user
Ray Soto VR moves from experiments to immersion
David Skok What lies beyond paywalls
Bill Adair The year of the fact-checking bot
Liz Danzico The triumph of the small
Tracie Powell Building reader relationships
Pablo Boczkowski Fake news and the future of journalism
Juliette De Maeyer and Dominique Trudel A rebirth of populist journalism
Christopher Meighan Unlocking a deeper mobile experience
Keren Goldshlager Defining a focus, and then saying no
Carla Zanoni Prioritizing emotional health
Swati Sharma Failing diversity is failing journalism
Helen Havlak Chasing mobile search results
Kawandeep Virdee Moving deeper than the machine of clicks
Michael Oreskes Reversing the erosion of democracy
Ståle Grut The battle for high-quality VR
Dan Gillmor Fix the demand side of news too
Juan Luis Sánchez Your predictions are our present
Peter Sterne A dangerous anti-press mix