The year AI actually changes the media business

“New companies will appear that use AI to aggregate and summarize journalism; reporters will learn how to use the new tools to find ideas; writers will figure out how it can help them compose new stories or at least get through writer’s block.”

This will be the year that AI actually changes the media business.

In the past, we’ve had AI writing short sports stories and helping with basic copy editing. This year, new companies will appear that use AI to aggregate and summarize journalism; reporters will learn how to use the new tools to find ideas; writers will figure out how it can help them compose new stories or at least get through writer’s block.

It’ll change the ad side too, with AI content production coming to advertising studios. It will change copy-editing to some degree, and it will help with fact-checking, too. It’s already changing the work of illustrators and changing the kind of skills needed to thrive in that field.

I also suspect that there will be intense debates about whether these changes are good or not. Regardless, I’m certain they are coming.

Nicholas Thompson is CEO of The Atlantic.

This will be the year that AI actually changes the media business.

In the past, we’ve had AI writing short sports stories and helping with basic copy editing. This year, new companies will appear that use AI to aggregate and summarize journalism; reporters will learn how to use the new tools to find ideas; writers will figure out how it can help them compose new stories or at least get through writer’s block.

It’ll change the ad side too, with AI content production coming to advertising studios. It will change copy-editing to some degree, and it will help with fact-checking, too. It’s already changing the work of illustrators and changing the kind of skills needed to thrive in that field.

I also suspect that there will be intense debates about whether these changes are good or not. Regardless, I’m certain they are coming.

Nicholas Thompson is CEO of The Atlantic.

James Salanga   Journalists work from a place of harm reduction

Esther Kezia Thorpe   Subscription pressures force product innovation

Julia Beizer   News fatigue shows us a clear path forward

J. Siguru Wahutu   American journalism reckons with its colonialist tendencies

Ariel Zirulnick   Journalism doubles down on user needs

Jessica Maddox   Journalists keep getting manipulated by internet culture

David Cohn   AI made this prediction

Rachel Glickhouse   Humanizing newsrooms will be a badge of honor

Rodney Gibbs   Recalibrating how we work apart

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

Ryan Nave   Citizen journalism, but make it equitable

Priyanjana Bengani   Partisan local news networks will collaborate

Upasna Gautam   Technology that performs at the speed of news

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

Jakob Moll   Journalism startups will think beyond English

David Skok   Renewed interest in human-powered reporting

Khushbu Shah   Global reporting will suffer

Amethyst J. Davis   The slight of the great contraction

Mario García   More newsrooms go mobile-first

Emma Carew Grovum   The year to resist forgetting about diversity

Eric Nuzum   A focus on people instead of power

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

Jody Brannon   We’ll embrace policy remedies

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

Barbara Raab   More journalism funders will take more risks

Simon Galperin   Philanthropy stops investing in corporate media

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

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

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

Julia Angwin   Democracies will get serious about saving journalism

Sarabeth Berman   Nonprofit local news shows that it can scale

Jesse Holcomb   Buffeted, whipped, bullied, pulled

Masuma Ahuja   Journalism starts working for and with its communities

Jessica Clark   Open discourse retrenches

Anna Nirmala   News organizations get new structures

Basile Simon   Towards supporting criminal accountability

Delano Massey   The industry shakes its imposter syndrome

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

Surya Mattu   Data journalists learn from photojournalists

Al Lucca   Digital news design gets interesting again

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

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

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

Sarah Marshall   A web channel strategy won’t be enough

Cory Bergman   The AI content flood

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

Sue Cross   Thinking and acting collectively to save the news

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

Eric Ulken   Generative AI brings wrongness at scale

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

Joe Amditis   AI throws a lifeline to local publishers

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

Ayala Panievsky   It’s time for PR for journalism

Richard Tofel   The press might get better at vetting presidential candidates

Tamar Charney   Flux is the new stability

Elite Truong   In platform collapse, an opportunity for community

Janet Haven   ChatGPT and the future of trust 

Peter Bale   Rising costs force more digital innovation

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

Jaden Amos   TikTok personality journalists continue to rise

Pia Frey   Publishers start polling their users at scale

Kathy Lu   We need emotionally agile newsroom leaders

Mael Vallejo   More threats to press freedom across the Americas

Anita Varma   Journalism prioritizes the basic need for survival

Alexandra Svokos   Working harder to reach audiences where they are

Taylor Lorenz   The “creator economy” will be astroturfed

Francesco Zaffarano   There is no end of “social media”

Zizi Papacharissi   Platforms are over

Kerri Hoffman   Podcasting goes local

Sue Schardt   Toward a new poetics of journalism

Nicholas Thompson   The year AI actually changes the media business

Raney Aronson-Rath   Journalists will band together to fight intimidation

Laxmi Parthasarathy   Unlocking the silent demand for international journalism

Josh Schwartz   The AI spammers are coming

Emily Nonko   Incarcerated reporters get more bylines

Christoph Mergerson   The rot at the core of the news business

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

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

Ståle Grut   Your newsroom experiences a Midjourney-gate, too

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

Michael Schudson   Journalism gets more and more difficult

Susan Chira   Equipping local journalism

Sue Robinson   Engagement journalism will have to confront a tougher reality

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

Alex Perry   New paths to transparency without Twitter

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

Joni Deutsch   Podcast collaboration — not competition — breeds excellence

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

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

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

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

Alexandra Borchardt   The year of the climate journalism strategy

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

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

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

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

Victor Pickard   The year journalism and capitalism finally divorce

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

Jonas Kaiser   Rejecting the “free speech” frame

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

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

Lisa Heyamoto   The independent news industry gets a roadmap to sustainability

Jim VandeHei   There is no “peak newsletter”

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

Ben Werdmuller   The internet is up for grabs again

Joshua P. Darr   Local to live, wire to wither

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

Gordon Crovitz   The year advertisers stop funding misinformation

Sumi Aggarwal   Smart newsrooms will prioritize board development

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

Karina Montoya   More reporters on the antitrust beat

Gina Chua   The traditional story structure gets deconstructed

Amy Schmitz Weiss   Journalism education faces a crossroads

Larry Ryckman   We’ll work together with our competitors

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

Eric Thurm   Journalists think of themselves as workers

Leezel Tanglao   Community partnerships drive better reporting

Kirstin McCudden   We’ll codify protection of journalism and newsgathering

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

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

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

Brian Stelter   Finding new ways to reach news avoiders

Walter Frick   Journalists wake up to the power of prediction markets

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

Kaitlyn Wells   We’ll prioritize media literacy for children

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

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

Joanne McNeil   Facebook and the media kiss and make up

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

Matt Rasnic   More newsroom workers turn to organized labor

AX Mina   Journalism in a time of permacrisis

Alex Sujong Laughlin   Credit where it’s due

Mar Cabra   The inevitable mental health revolution

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

Cassandra Etienne   Local news fellowships will help fight newsroom inequities

Peter Sterne   AI enters the newsroom

Dannagal G. Young   Stop rewarding elite performances of identity threat

Tim Carmody   Newsletter writers need a new ethics

Wilson Liévano   Diaspora journalism takes the next step

A.J. Bauer   Covering the right wrong

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

Dana Lacey   Tech will screw publishers over

Moreno Cruz Osório   Brazilian journalism turns wounds into action

Nicholas Diakopoulos   Journalists productively harness generative AI tools

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

Gabe Schneider   Well-funded journalism leaders stop making disparate pay

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

Anthony Nadler   Confronting media gerrymandering

Bill Grueskin   Local news will come to rely on AI

Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau   More of the same

Tre'vell Anderson   Continued culpability in anti-trans campaigns

Brian Moritz   Rebuilding the news bundle

Parker Molloy   We’ll reach new heights of moral panic

Sarah Alvarez   Dream bigger or lose out

John Davidow   A year of intergenerational learning

Snigdha Sur   Newsrooms get nimble in a recession

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