AI made this prediction

“Some (not all) journalists will navigate their careers as those who can leverage this technology to improve the news ecosystem.”

To make my 2023 prediction I’ve leaned heavily on artificial intelligence.

After creating the script with the AI-enabled Lex Page document editor, I enlisted the help of WellSaid Labs to provide the narration. With AugX Lab’s, I got a transcript of the audio and an automatic video with AI-suggested video cuts and images. To add an extra layer, I utilized MidJourney to take many of the suggested images and give them an AI boost.

I understand the wariness surrounding AI, but I wanted to share a vision of 2023 and beyond where AI is a specialized skill and some (not all) journalists will navigate their careers as those who can leverage this technology to improve the news ecosystem.

For those that prefer to read rather than watch a video, the transcript is here. While the ideas are more important than the produced video, I would encourage you to watch until you’ve heard at least two or three of the AI-generated voices narrate. Hopefully it spurs some ideas of what could be possible in the future.

David Cohn is a cofounder of Subtext.

To make my 2023 prediction I’ve leaned heavily on artificial intelligence.

After creating the script with the AI-enabled Lex Page document editor, I enlisted the help of WellSaid Labs to provide the narration. With AugX Lab’s, I got a transcript of the audio and an automatic video with AI-suggested video cuts and images. To add an extra layer, I utilized MidJourney to take many of the suggested images and give them an AI boost.

I understand the wariness surrounding AI, but I wanted to share a vision of 2023 and beyond where AI is a specialized skill and some (not all) journalists will navigate their careers as those who can leverage this technology to improve the news ecosystem.

For those that prefer to read rather than watch a video, the transcript is here. While the ideas are more important than the produced video, I would encourage you to watch until you’ve heard at least two or three of the AI-generated voices narrate. Hopefully it spurs some ideas of what could be possible in the future.

David Cohn is a cofounder of Subtext.

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Jim Friedlich   Local journalism steps up to the challenge of civic coverage

Matt Rasnic   More newsroom workers turn to organized labor

Alexandra Svokos   Working harder to reach audiences where they are

Dominic-Madori Davis   Everyone finally realizes the need for diverse voices in tech reporting

Nik Usher   This is the year of the RSS reader. (Really!)

Andrew Donohue   We’ll find out whether journalism can, indeed, save democracy

Mauricio Cabrera   It’s no longer about audiences, it’s about communities

Khushbu Shah   Global reporting will suffer

Ben Werdmuller   The internet is up for grabs again

Joe Amditis   AI throws a lifeline to local publishers

Upasna Gautam   Technology that performs at the speed of news

Emily Nonko   Incarcerated reporters get more bylines

Paul Cheung   More news organizations will realize they are in the business of impact, not eyeballs

Victor Pickard   The year journalism and capitalism finally divorce

Molly de Aguiar and Mandy Van Deven   Narrative change trend brings new money to journalism

Sam Guzik   AI will start fact-checking. We may not like the results.

Brian Stelter   Finding new ways to reach news avoiders

Bill Adair   The year of the fact-check (no, really!)

Rachel Glickhouse   Humanizing newsrooms will be a badge of honor

Kavya Sukumar   Belling the cat: The rise of independent fact-checking at scale

Basile Simon   Towards supporting criminal accountability

Kaitlyn Wells   We’ll prioritize media literacy for children

Parker Molloy   We’ll reach new heights of moral panic

Susan Chira   Equipping local journalism

Barbara Raab   More journalism funders will take more risks

Amethyst J. Davis   The slight of the great contraction

Walter Frick   Journalists wake up to the power of prediction markets

Julia Angwin   Democracies will get serious about saving journalism

Karina Montoya   More reporters on the antitrust beat

Sarabeth Berman   Nonprofit local news shows that it can scale

Snigdha Sur   Newsrooms get nimble in a recession

A.J. Bauer   Covering the right wrong

Bill Grueskin   Local news will come to rely on AI

Peter Sterne   AI enters the newsroom

Sumi Aggarwal   Smart newsrooms will prioritize board development

Cari Nazeer and Emily Goligoski   News organizations step up their support for caregivers

Mariana Moura Santos   A woman who speaks is a woman who changes the world

John Davidow   A year of intergenerational learning

Burt Herman   The year AI truly arrives — and with it the reckoning

Emma Carew Grovum   The year to resist forgetting about diversity

David Cohn   AI made this prediction

Hillary Frey   Death to the labor-intensive memo for prospective hires

Gina Chua   The traditional story structure gets deconstructed

Jennifer Choi and Jonathan Jackson   Funders finally bet on next-generation news entrepreneurs

Pia Frey   Publishers start polling their users at scale

Joshua P. Darr   Local to live, wire to wither

Martina Efeyini   Talk to Gen Z. They’re the experts of Gen Z.

Sue Cross   Thinking and acting collectively to save the news

Ståle Grut   Your newsroom experiences a Midjourney-gate, too

Kathy Lu   We need emotionally agile newsroom leaders

Wilson Liévano   Diaspora journalism takes the next step

Janet Haven   ChatGPT and the future of trust 

Daniel Trielli   Trust in news will continue to fall. Just look at Brazil.

Jenna Weiss-Berman   The economic downturn benefits the podcasting industry. (No, really!)

Anthony Nadler   Confronting media gerrymandering

Nicholas Diakopoulos   Journalists productively harness generative AI tools

Anika Anand   Independent news businesses lead the way on healthy work cultures

Simon Galperin   Philanthropy stops investing in corporate media

Ariel Zirulnick   Journalism doubles down on user needs

Johannes Klingebiel   The innovation team, R.I.P.

J. Siguru Wahutu   American journalism reckons with its colonialist tendencies

Kerri Hoffman   Podcasting goes local

Tim Carmody   Newsletter writers need a new ethics

David Skok   Renewed interest in human-powered reporting

Joanne McNeil   Facebook and the media kiss and make up

Juleyka Lantigua   Newsrooms recognize women of color as the canaries in the coal mine

Cassandra Etienne   Local news fellowships will help fight newsroom inequities

Francesco Zaffarano   There is no end of “social media”

Mar Cabra   The inevitable mental health revolution

S. Mitra Kalita   “Everything sucks. Good luck to you.”

Moreno Cruz Osório   Brazilian journalism turns wounds into action

Alan Henry   A reckoning with why trust in news is so low

Sue Schardt   Toward a new poetics of journalism

Leezel Tanglao   Community partnerships drive better reporting

Ryan Kellett   Airline-like loyalty programs try to tie down news readers

Sarah Stonbely   Growth in public funding for news and information at the state and local levels

Elite Truong   In platform collapse, an opportunity for community

Julia Beizer   News fatigue shows us a clear path forward

Alex Sujong Laughlin   Credit where it’s due

Alex Perry   New paths to transparency without Twitter

Gabe Schneider   Well-funded journalism leaders stop making disparate pay

Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau   More of the same

James Salanga   Journalists work from a place of harm reduction

Gordon Crovitz   The year advertisers stop funding misinformation

Jaden Amos   TikTok personality journalists continue to rise

Larry Ryckman   We’ll work together with our competitors

Doris Truong   Workers demand to be paid what the job is worth

Josh Schwartz   The AI spammers are coming

Cindy Royal   Yes, journalists should learn to code, but…

Laxmi Parthasarathy   Unlocking the silent demand for international journalism

Jarrad Henderson   Video editing will help people understand the media they consume

Christina Shih   Shared values move from nice-to-haves to essentials

Nicholas Thompson   The year AI actually changes the media business

Lisa Heyamoto   The independent news industry gets a roadmap to sustainability

Cory Bergman   The AI content flood

Dana Lacey   Tech will screw publishers over

Mario García   More newsrooms go mobile-first

Zizi Papacharissi   Platforms are over

Jim VandeHei   There is no “peak newsletter”

Rodney Gibbs   Recalibrating how we work apart

Jessica Clark   Open discourse retrenches

Shanté Cosme   The answer to “quiet quitting” is radical empathy

Michael Schudson   Journalism gets more and more difficult

Eric Ulken   Generative AI brings wrongness at scale

Al Lucca   Digital news design gets interesting again

Jessica Maddox   Journalists keep getting manipulated by internet culture

Ryan Gantz   “I’m sorry, but I’m a large language model”

Taylor Lorenz   The “creator economy” will be astroturfed

Sarah Alvarez   Dream bigger or lose out

Surya Mattu   Data journalists learn from photojournalists

Tre'vell Anderson   Continued culpability in anti-trans campaigns

Raney Aronson-Rath   Journalists will band together to fight intimidation

Jacob L. Nelson   Despite it all, people will still want to be journalists

Errin Haines   Journalists on the campaign trail mend trust with the public

Stefanie Murray   The year U.S. media stops screwing around and becomes pro-democracy

Eric Thurm   Journalists think of themselves as workers

Dannagal G. Young   Stop rewarding elite performances of identity threat

Andrew Losowsky   Journalism realizes the replacement for Twitter is not a new Twitter

Anna Nirmala   News organizations get new structures

Anita Varma   Journalism prioritizes the basic need for survival

Felicitas Carrique and Becca Aaronson   News product goes from trend to standard

Alexandra Borchardt   The year of the climate journalism strategy

Brian Moritz   Rebuilding the news bundle

Jesse Holcomb   Buffeted, whipped, bullied, pulled

Nicholas Jackson   There will be launches — and we’ll keep doing the work

Amy Schmitz Weiss   Journalism education faces a crossroads

Delano Massey   The industry shakes its imposter syndrome

Kaitlin C. Miller   Harassment in journalism won’t get better, but we’ll talk about it more openly

Mary Walter-Brown and Tristan Loper   Mission-driven metrics become our North Star

Jody Brannon   We’ll embrace policy remedies

Ayala Panievsky   It’s time for PR for journalism

Esther Kezia Thorpe   Subscription pressures force product innovation

Richard Tofel   The press might get better at vetting presidential candidates

Priyanjana Bengani   Partisan local news networks will collaborate

Tamar Charney   Flux is the new stability

Eric Holthaus   As social media fragments, marginalized voices gain more power

Jakob Moll   Journalism startups will think beyond English

Ryan Nave   Citizen journalism, but make it equitable

Danielle K. Brown and Kathleen Searles   DEI efforts must consider mental health and online abuse

AX Mina   Journalism in a time of permacrisis

Don Day   The news about the news is bad. I’m optimistic.

Joni Deutsch   Podcast collaboration — not competition — breeds excellence

Eric Nuzum   A focus on people instead of power

Peter Bale   Rising costs force more digital innovation

Sam Gregory   Synthetic media forces us to understand how media gets made

Jennifer Brandel   AI couldn’t care less. Journalists will care more. 

Sue Robinson   Engagement journalism will have to confront a tougher reality

Sarah Marshall   A web channel strategy won’t be enough

Mael Vallejo   More threats to press freedom across the Americas

Laura E. Davis   The year we embrace the robots — and ourselves

Valérie Bélair-Gagnon   Well-being will become a core tenet of journalism

Megan Lucero and Shirish Kulkarni   The future of journalism is not you

Kirstin McCudden   We’ll codify protection of journalism and newsgathering

Jonas Kaiser   Rejecting the “free speech” frame

Masuma Ahuja   Journalism starts working for and with its communities

Michael W. Wagner   The backlash against pro-democracy reporting is coming