Nicholas Diakopoulos | Nieman Journalism Lab

Articles by Nicholas Diakopoulos

Nicholas Diakopoulos is an assistant professor of communication at Northwestern University.

July 11, 2023

Writing guidelines for the role of AI in your newsroom? Here are some, er, guidelines for that

What’s okay and what’s verboten when it comes to AI in the production of news? Here’s how 21 newsrooms in the U.S., Europe, and elsewhere have laid out their own policies and plans.

Journalists productively harness generative AI tools

“It’s probably better to think of these tools as internal newsroom tools, making suggestions to reporters and editors rather than generating text that will be directly published.”

November 8, 2022

There’s a 68 in 100 chance you’ll read this article about the audience for FiveThirtyEight-style election predictions

In other words, the odds are pretty good — but it’s far from a lock.

October 18, 2021

How A/B testing can (and can’t) improve your headline writing

“We found, surprisingly, that no single feature of a headline’s writing style makes much of a difference in forecasting success.”

June 12, 2019

Droidward and Botstein can’t do it all, but AI-enhanced journalism offers a glimpse of the next knowledge economy

Estimates say that today’s AI can automate only about 15 percent of a reporter’s job and 9 percent of an editor’s job. But that doesn’t mean AI won’t change a lot of the work that remains.

Fortifying social media from automated inauthenticity

“Artificial neural networks are advancing rapidly in their ability to synthesize content — including images, videos, and texts — that are increasingly indistinguishable from authentic content.”

Platforming the news

“There’s more at stake in the competition around platforms than market share and money. It’s a question of values.”

February 14, 2013

Finding tools vs. making tools: Discovering common ground between computer science and journalism

At Georgia Tech’s Computation + Journalism Symposium, representatives from both fields explored what the vibrant news information environment might look like.

Nick Diakopoulos: Understanding bias in computational news media

As algorithms play an ever-larger role in how we get news and information, it’s important to realize the ways that bias — intentional or not — can seep into their decisions.