While she brings up several points that I agree with, her perspective on how journalism should move forward, seems distorted by her obvious anger towards those who purportedly played a role in its downfall.

Kitty starts ‘An open letter to journalists’ by declaring: ‘you are working in a dead profession that you all had a part in killing.’ I was left shocked by this statement. Not only because of her hyper-aggressive tone, but also because of how massively sweeping this notion is; and it really does reflect her attitude towards journalists throughout the entire book.

But does Kitty have the evidence to prove every journalist has played a role in the death of journalism? No she doesn’t; instead she is simply sensationalising, just like all the others journalists she accuses of killing journalism.

In Chapter One, ‘What was Journalism?’, Kitty states that ‘in an era where overtly partisan news operations such as the Fox News Channel have replaced fact with opinion, the function of the press has morphed from information-gatherers and disseminators to cheerleaders and enablers’. This I completely agree with. Publications should remain neutral when disseminating information because if not, they can only be producing propaganda which comprises the credibility of the information we receive from them; they are shooting themselves in the foot, potentially fatally.

In Chapter Two she insists that ‘the seeds of destruction began when journalism’s power was shown to make and break careers, fortunes, and even lives.’ I can see how this power might turn into arrogance, eventually leading public/political figures such as Donald Trump to bypass the press rather than bow down to them. On the other hand, when was it that journalism didn’t matter that much? Surely ‘the power of the press’ has been palpable for a very long time, and as often as not, it has been used unwisely. Furthermore, it wouldn’t make sense for journalism to try to recover its powerlessness. So what, exactly, is she asking journalism to do here?

In Chapter Nine Kitty accuses journalism tutors of mis-educating young journalists. She says that ‘psychology is an essential subject for any journalist to know; yet it is not taught in j-school.’ I agree this would be a valuable addition to the syllabus. I also believe that having a solid understanding of the human psyche and being able to identify people’s mis-perceptions, are key skills for a journalist gathering information. But this sin of omission hardly amounts to the professors murdering the profession.

The final section of the book is entitled ‘The Resurrection’ – it’s the author’s strategy for pulling journalism out of the grave. When journalism’s not even dead, it doesn’t help to talk about it in these apocalyptic tones. However, when Kitty claims journalism ‘must embrace science to become a different thing’, I find myself largely in agreement with her. Stories based on hard-won facts need to be seen as far superior to stories based on superficial narratives. If we don’t re-instate this hierarchy we are allowing opinion to masquerade as reporting, effectively devaluing them both. Instead I agree with Kitty that we need an injection of what used to be called ‘precision journalism’ in order to rid ourselves of such laziness.

Re-introducing the scientific element is important. However, I don’t believe this alone is enough to revive journalism. It needs a re-vamp that is more wide-ranging than that.

Overall Alexandra Kitty does a great job at explaining how the previous model of journalism worked and describing the different factors which eventually disrupted it. Although her book felt very repetitive in parts, it has prompted me to explore the journalist’s fall from grace and to investigate how journalism can do better in future.

The book is divided into eight chapters: each one focuses on a problem that the news industry is facing, what that means for society, and what journalism should do about it.  

De Botton starts by showing why the audience might get bored reading the news as it is today. “We are standing far too close”, he explains, where instead “we need news organisations to help our curiosity by signalling how their stories fit into the larger themes on which a sincere capacity for interest depends.”

De Botton goes on to compare a news piece to a small patch of paint which you would not be able to appreciate in isolation. Without the bigger picture, he warns, you won’t see the point. Accordingly, De Botton believes journalism should not only be “collect[ing] facts”, but rather “teasing out their relevance”. 

Too often, he says, journalism tries to offer a quick fix which only makes people angry and dissatisfied when it doesn’t solve anything: “News should make us angry for the right reasons and as a part of a constructive project”.

He warns against the stilted character and stultifying effect of most media coverage: “news stories tend to frame issues in such a way as to reduce our will or even our capacity to imagine them in profoundly other ways”.  If he’s right, too much of today’s journalism is instilling un-think rather than opening up the outside world to our intervention.

De Botton doesn’t quite say that money is the root of all evil; but he does think that journalism suffers when commercial considerations take top priority. Without identifying how journalism can actually pay its way, he reckons that news organisations which don’t invest in anything new for fear of losing their audience, run the risk of losing journalism’s future altogether.

He’s not, as far as I know, a Tottenham Hotspur supporter, but he does appear to adhere to their motto: audere est facere; to dare is to do.

Rationale: Politics and media are stuck in a spiral that incentivises divisive rhetoric, hyper-partisanship and disinformation. The people who benefit the most from this populist approach are politicians who are often supported by social media militias and homegrown publications with low editorial standards. Quality media end up reporting on these politicians as well using “clickable stories” because they struggle to survive financially.  

Findings: Arena researched different approaches to the “polarising subject” of migration. Corriere della Sera – a leading Italian newspaper – experimented with different story formats, while the LSE analysed reader responses. The analysis sought to establish what sort of content encouraged a “more civil debate, smoothed polarisation and enhanced trust towards accurate content.” 

It was noted that the number of migrants arriving in Italy decreased significantly in 2018, but the number of news stories increased – a rise thought to have been connected to the anti-immigrant policies of newly appointed deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini.

Investigating the response to these stories, Arena researchers found that a straightforward, impartial and unemotional approach led to more public trust and less criticism of the media, whereas human interest stories were more likely to prompt criticism and toxic language in response. However, hostile reactions were seen to soften when a sympathetic story concerned a single individual rather than a migrant group. News that referred to a solution to the perceived problem of migration, was also less likely to evoke a negative response. Data-driven approaches may elicit criticism, but often in a less toxic language. Also, video content produces a lower level of negativity possibly because moving images are seen as more reliable, or perhaps because people find it easier to engage with the format.

Relevance to Creative Journalism: An important point for our research is that human interest stories which aim to build empathy can have the opposite effect, prompting negative comments and criticism of the media platforms in which they appear. It may be that people feel such coverage is trying to manipulate them emotionally.

The study also considered what might happen if European media focused on migrants’ previous professions, or on the military conflicts behind migration, rather than cursorily classifying them by age and nationality.     

The research concludes that coverage of migration should navigate between anti-immigrant populism on the one hand and explicit sympathy on the other. Better to go for a straightforward, impartial approach which favours data over emotion; solutions-oriented journalism is welcomed more than what is seen as opinion-mongering.  

Finally, the study concluded that journalism should change the way it describes migrants because this description changes the way society sees them. This may well be true in part; nonetheless we should recall that people often read between the lines of what’s published. If they weren’t doing this, there wouldn’t be so much criticism when news media are (frequently) perceived to have got the story wrong.

This happens to be my opinion; it is also based in history. However, exactly how the interests of democracy are best served by journalism, is itself a subject for further debate.

In The Elements of Journalism, edited by Bill Kovach in 2001, we read:

“The principles and purpose of journalism are not defined by technology, nor by journalists nor by the techniques which they employ.” Instead, what defines journalism is “the function news plays in the lives of people. The purpose of journalism is to provide citizens with the information they need to make the best possible decisions about their lives, their communities, their societies, and their governments.”

Meanwhile, in a more recent piece entitled What´s the purpose of journalism? Media Innovation student Alina Fichter put a significantly different gloss on the performance of journalism’s role:

“We want to initiate important debates and burst the filter-bubbles. We want to spark critical discussions in society. We want to enable citizens to make smart decisions. So, if these are our goals, then that’s what we should measure.”

Fichter insisted that journalists must be “clear about what your media organisation stands for and have the courage to define your goals accordingly.”

These two accounts are both related to democracy, but they take different approaches to it. In the former, journalism plays an essentially neutral role so that citizens may become actively partisan. In the latter, journalists are expected to initiate debate by declaring who they are and what they stand for. Only then, after a public conversation in which journalists have featured as protagonists, will citizens arrive at ‘smart decisions’.

The second approach is predicated on a personal stance taken by the journalist, while the first approach depends on journalists as individual persons absenting themselves from the conduct of their professional role, in order to equip citizens to make their own presence felt in public life. In one, the personality of the journalist is paramount; in the other, the citizen is sovereign. Thus although both approaches formally acknowledge democracy as the overriding consideration, nonetheless there is a clear divide between journalism that is personal to both journalist and reader, and journalism which is strictly impartial – showing no fear or favour.

In my estimation, it can’t be both.

Historically, journalism introduced the possibility of everyone becoming aware of political decisions and debates, bringing to people’s homes (especially the homes of middle-class or lower-class families) essential information on what was going on among the elites, thereby allowing the mass of the population to gain  influence over important decisions. Almost like a portrait, journalists would paint news with words, transforming a reality which had been unreachable for most people, into something they were now part of. Thus we came to have access to the plans under discussion which would have profound implications for our own lives. If there is anything democratic in history, it is indeed the emergence of journalism, which brought people together, with strong voices and made them not just people, but also the public.

The problem is that democracy is now being used as a quick answer to justify everything. Yes, we do live in a democracy but to what extent does personal journalism manipulate that expectation by creating the idea of freedom while pushing and prodding us in the direction of the reporter’s emotions?

By raising this question, I am not saying that journalists who practise personal journalism are consciously conspiring to manipulate readers. With hindsight I can see that I myself have previously taken a personal approach to stories in order to imbue them with an emotional charge. I guess I thought that readers ought to be affected, as perhaps I was myself when I encountered the situation I was there to report. In doing this I didn’t set out to toy with my readers’ emotions and I shouldn’t think that other journalists are any more deliberately manipulative than I was. Nonetheless I now think that deploying my personality in the attempt to prompt an emotional response on the part of the reader, is problematic in itself. Moreover, this problem is becoming ubiquitous.

What I believe is happening, especially with the emergence of social networks, is that personal journalism has the effect of limiting our thinking. We end up putting emotions ahead of the facts and then find ourselves trapped in a reality of algorithms, at the mercy of the cyber-power which offers ‘limitless’ information – in fact only that information which tends to confirm our (existing) pattern of (consumer) behaviour. By definition, this excludes the impartial information (the whole picture, not the partial depiction we already agree with) that never reaches the public precisely because we are cocooned in a place that matches particular journalists and their emotions with the personal feelings and predetermined preferences of reader-consumers. In other words, we have ended up in different versions of fake democracy – various guises, same unreality.

Digital media creator Howard Owens believes that personal journalism is just as ethical as old-school public journalism, and he adds that “it still values facts, fairness, truth telling and good reporting. It’s just that personal journalism is written differently. It is written from one person, a person we can identify and identify with, for one person.” For Owens himself, personal journalists do a lot more than mere reporting: “They let us see at least a little about who they are, what they believe, what drives them and what they find important.”

However, for Philip Corbett, The Times’s associate managing editor with responsibility for editorial standards, personal journalism isn’t as positive. “I flatly reject the notion that there is no such thing as impartial, objective journalism (…) We expect professionals in all sorts of fields to put their personal opinions aside, or keep them to themselves, when they do their work — judges, police officers, scientists, teachers. Why would we expect less of journalists?”

Owens’ idea is appealing – ​​going from just journalists to human beings with beautiful souls. But I do not think that soulfulness is the best qualification for being a journalist. To follow on from what Corbett said, I expect doctors and lawyers to put into practice what they know – what they learned when training for their profession. What feelings they may have as private individuals is irrelevant to me as long as they are good professionals.

To put it more sharply, how would it be if a judge approached a case according to her personal beliefs? What if some judges feel that some homicides are justified – should they carry this attitude to court? It’s bad enough if they talk about it in personal terms when they’re out socialising. But inside the court room during a trial, absolutely not.

We have heard so many times about police officers abusing their power. Instead, we want them to stick to doing their duty, and that is why we talk about it when they stray from the straight and narrow. But suddenly, journalists are more than journalists; they have to be storytellers, almost like magic creatures who will open our souls and play on our heart strings. Yet when I want to experience magical, emotional things, I look directly for them, occasionally in personal blogs but more often in literature, art or films. Not in newspaper pages, where I want to find information about what is happening in my city, in my country, in the world I inhabit. I want facts so that I can face the world as a citizen; I do not need an emotion-laden interpretation.

I feel, more and more, that the public is being treated as if it’s unable to decide for itself. As a reader, I do not like the idea of ​​being treated like I cannot deal with impartial news. As a journalist, I want to provide readers with the impartial information they need in order to work out for themselves where they stand.

Let me give you an example. From my own experience as a reader, in my social media-led comfort zone, Brexit was not presented as the best option for anyone; it wasn’t even supposed to be an option! The journalists I read, the news that came to my social networks, the bubble I lived in, in all of these Brexit was painted in highly emotional tones with strong echoes of fascism. I’m talking about prominent journalists in quality newspapers, always repeating themselves, always based on emotion.

However, as a journalist, I decided to go into the field and interview people from both sides – both from the protest against Brexit and also the protest in favour. I produced and published stories which showed other people who weren’t there, what the protests looked like from both sides. I also came to understand that what I myself had been reading only served to fuel my ego as a political activist, instead of informing me impartially and thus allowing me to decide for myself what to think.

I realised that all the personal journalism I had been subjected to in this instance, was making me unable to understand other arguments – arguments which I now feel empathic towards, even if I still disagree with them. Having escaped from my own bubble, my political position has remained against Brexit. However, I no longer think it is a perverse proposal, as I thought previously; I no longer feel hurt and embittered, as before.

I am a person with strong opinions on many topics and I also have a strong personality. But should I take what I feel and use it as the basis for my work as a journalist? If we all do this all the time, how will we ever know the whole picture – over and above what’s emotionally satisfying for the journalist who happens to satisfy my emotions? How would we analyse situations? If we do not know the facts from impartial journalists, if we rely on journalists who are already reliant on existing preferences (theirs and ours), how can we make honest and responsible decisions?

If all media organisations and all journalists must begin by defining what they believe in, what they stand for and which discussions they want to start, then isn’t journalism reduced to a conveyor belt with all of us wrapped up in one of the many different boxes it contains?

Conversely, where are we creating the spaces in which readers can see what is happening in the world before going on to work it out for themselves, among themselves?  

With the world in flux, a news story as told today could be completely different by tomorrow, and with that change, should come the possibility for us, readers, to change our opinion of what has occurred. But this kind of open-endedness becomes less likely when journalism is centred on the emotional response of the individual journalist. Far from being open, journalism that isn’t impartial, encloses us within walls we’re not even aware of, shutting out information that differs from the half-truth we already know.

Some will say that my stance is old-fashioned. Yet I think my way of seeing journalism is more innovative than conservative. Already the Internet is full of material that is laden with emotion and, if dare I say, almost desperate for affect. The really radical thing is to create more space for information which aims to be impartial.

What I look for in journalism as a citizen is also what I want to bring to journalism as a professional: impartiality. I hope we can agree that members of the public have the capacity to analyse a news story as it is, and to draw their own conclusions. Yes, there is room for personal journalism, and there are moments when journalists must be able to voice strong opinions. But not by default. Instead we should start by showing the whole picture, without displaying our own feelings and without attempting to influence readers’ emotions.

It is important to understand that if we posit journalists as human beings who work for the public in a poetic or artistic way, we are burdening the news with too much baggage. Society needs journalism to provide facts; magic and interpretation can be found elsewhere.

What happens in the world isn’t necessarily magical, it’s only real. But on second thoughts, ‘only’ doesn’t come into it. Journalism that does justice to reality – that in itself is a big ask and a mighty task for my generation to fulfill.

With the expansion of the internet and online content, people are constantly exposed to so much information from so many platforms, they often feel as though they do not need journalists anymore. The disconnect between journalism and the wider population has been worsened by President Donald Trump and the way he labels all media criticism as ‘fake news’. On the other hand, if sensible people are prepared to go along with his spewings, it can only mean that professional journalism is already deeply discredited in their eyes. Once again, there is much for journalism to do re-connect.

I believe that the next generation of journalists can restore the authority of journalism by implementing a set of changes to the way journalism works.

Yes, we can operate on the nearly new platforms associated with digital media technology. But this in itself is not enough. What matters most is the content created for such platforms. For example, a YouTuber known as Philip DeFranco has garnered a sizeable audience for his daily news show that tackles everything from celebrity news to politics. He is a real and relatable person who approaches the news agenda in a fresh, fun way. Although there are lots of people doing this much, what makes DeFranco distinctive is his determination to look at topical issues from every side; he criticises all sides, appraising their strengths and weaknesses in order for his viewers to come to their own judgement. In this way, he separates his work from the set of views and beliefs which are unique to him as a private individual. Not that he does this as faceless fact collector; instead he has stretched his personality far enough to engage with opinions and arguments which are a long way from his own.

Philip DeFranco has managed to gain his audience’s trust through his ability to argue for and against both sides of every controversy. Most notably, this was the case with his coverage of the 2016 US Presidential Election, in which he critiqued all standpoints equally and fairly. In effect, he cracked the problem of objectivity by reinventing it in a personable form.

It would be a cop out to say that to safeguard the future of journalism all that is required of us is to make use of new kit. It is not just that journalism has been slow to embrace new platforms; the crucial question is how we re-formulate journalism to make best use of such vehicles.

In order to re-connect with today’s readers and viewers, journalism will have to change the way it approaches the news. Making it personal and disciplined at the same time, as DeFranco has managed to do, seems the best way for journalism to carry on. As I see it, that’s the combination with which to begin to restore the art of journalism.

An event occurred in October 2015 which will cast a long shadow over the work of journalism and the jobs of journalists.  Associated Press (AP) had been testing a piece of software which generated stories from the quarterly reports issued by listed companies.  These reports flood out four times a year and AP wanted a fast method of getting the news on the wires.  It had already implemented a software which can generate pyramid-style stories from this highly structured data; but it had also maintained a further stage in the process whereby human being were called on to check the stories generated by the software.  In October 2015, however, AP ceased taking this extra step. The software would do it all: no human interaction at all.  No salaries; no holidays; no maternity or paternity leave; no sick leave; 24-hours a day the software can produce pyramid stories reporting on the financial results which are seemingly indistinguishable from human output.

Computers take out “computers”

This is not the first time computers have taken over the jobs of humans.  The first time computers took over human jobs was the job of the “computers”, i.e. people who did the thousands of small calculations for scientific or technical applications on hard-cranked calculators.  Computers, the electronic type, could do this faster and more accurately.

In business the first application in the UK was the Lyons Electronic Office (LEO) computer in 1951.  LEO did the bakery valuations application.  The application was first run on September 5 and took over the job without manual checking on November 29 1951.  Later other jobs were developed for LEO including the payroll.  Lyons even ran the payroll for other companies such as Ford Motor Company in 1956.  There went the jobs of wages clerks.

The starting point for the application of electronic computers to human jobs was Alan Turing’s 1936 paper. ‘On computable numbers.’  In it Turning devised a theoretical machine to solve a problem in mathematics.  He also showed that any mathematical problem which could be reduced into an algorithm, a series of logical steps, could be loaded onto this theoretical machine.

Theory to practice

Turning turned theory into practice while working at Bletchley, using the Colossus machine to help crack German military codes; then at the National Physical Laboratory and afterwards at Manchester University.

The more computing power there was, the faster algorithms could run and therefore extend the range of jobs for which the computer could be used, tackling more complex jobs which would run in a time to make the application practical.

Leo, Colossus and early computers depended upon the technologies developed by the radio and telecommunications industries.   With the coming of integrated circuits, the computer industry started to replace single transistors with its own technology.

In 1965 Gordon Moore,  a leading integrated circuit engineer,  showed that the integrated circuit industry had doubled the number of integrated transistors on the same area of silicone every year.  Later he revised this to every two years. More components on the same piece of silicone means faster computing: faster computing brings in applications which can be run as long as they have an algorithm and the time in which they run makes them practical.  As the chips get smaller then they need less power until they can be run by battery and be mobile.  As long as the computer can run the algorithm fast enough, it becomes a practical application.

Finite limits

The power of computer technology is not ever-increasing.  There are finite limits to integration: it is just that semiconductor engineers have found ways to achieve Moore’s law, which was not originally a prediction but an observation of what the engineers were able to do in the early days of integration.   There are other types of processor technology now available in the form of quantum mechanics which offer even faster processing speeds than conventional electronics.

As the price of computing fell and continues to fall and the speed increased and continues to increase, so layer after layer of human labour could be transferred to computing: it became practical to do so and, more importantly, profitable.   Employers sought out bottlenecks in production processes and tackled them in turn, starting with simple jobs and going onto the more complex ones as prices fell and speed increased.  The bottleneck in the newspaper industry was the process of composing  in hot metal.  Most journalists looked the other way as the jobs of compositors were automated and the bargaining power of compositors was crushed.  Today journalists cannot look away from the forward march of automation since it is their jobs which are now on the line.

Humans using the tools developed by humans

This is not to say that there is an inevitable technological determination about this process.  It is, after all, humans seeking to improve productivity and/or improve profitability by the application of technologies created by humans.   And not all the applications are successful.  There are many well documented IT disasters in the public sector where the algorithms where not sufficiently robust and/or the processing power fast enough to create a successful application.  There are just as many failures in the private sector, but they mainly remain private. Not so in the financial sector, where there has been a litany of much-publicised IT disasters. For example, a group of academics and traders called Long Term Capital Management thought they had developed a piece of software to play – and beat – the market. But they were wrong-footed, and their fund exploded, when the rules of the financial trading game change after a slump in Russian capital values in 1998.

The steps to computerisation

The process of transferring some aspect of human labour into computing takes several steps.  First it has to be identified as a bottleneck: this is in business applications where consultants come in.  They regularly review the labour process to seek out these bottlenecks.  Then the software has to be created for the application.  This often involves reviewing what the labour process is and transferring it into software.  Often this involves the collaboration of the very human labourers themselves who will eventually be replaced by the application, if successful.

There are always limits to what the software can do.  In the AP application the stories are routinely generated from standardised data contained in company financial reports.   These quarterly reports from publically-listed companies are accompanied by a long document which the US Securities and Exchange Commission requires for every quarterly announcement: it is called the 10Q form.  It includes the structured data of the financial report but also long passages of text which describe and analyse the context behind these financial results.  Software cannot yet drill down into these reports to get exclusive stories: it can only do the mundane task of writing a pyramid story from the numbers.   For some years to come, it will take humans to do the analysis.

We can begin to see, therefore, where journalists as human workers can fit into the new pattern of “content generation.”  Software can do the mundane task of generating stories from highly structured data.  Humans must continue to do the analysis.  For now.

We have seen that the application of computing is not a single event but a process depending on the ability of humans to identify bottlenecks and exploit the technology then available.    What was not (previously) possible to transfer to computers, (eventually) becomes possible.  For example, artificial intelligence (AI) applications can now mimic the reasoning of humans and provide mechanisms for f taking human reasoning into the world of computing.   According to Wired magazine, some financial traders are already using AI to make all of their trades, without human intervention.  This is an area where speed is essential to catch the price at the right level during the trading period.   As early as 2010 researchers at New York University estimated that over 50 percent of all trades on US stock markets were driven by software (Quant Congress).

Associated Press (AP) developed its quarterly reporting system because speed was essential.  The analytical side of the process of reporting, currently left to humans, is not yet so time-critical.  There will come a time when it is, and then it will be a candidate for the application of AI to what remains of the human involvement in financial reporting.  If the many prophets of AI are right then all human intelligence could, at some time in the future with the continued development of computing power, be transferred to algorithms.  These could then be captured in software and then run on hardware.

Does this mean that human journalism is just a long rear guard action of retreat in the face of the computerisation of journalism?

Forty-seven percent of employment at risk

In 2013 Frey and Osborne, two Oxford academics, plotted out the likelihood of jobs being computerised.  They used the US labour market classifications of 702 job titles.  They used a novel methodology to estimate the probability of computerisation of those jobs.  According to their estimates, 47% of total US employment is at risk.  Here is an extract from their full table focusing on the jobs which are in journalism or close to journalism.

Jobs in or close to journalism with their probability of computerisation

Source: Frey and Osborne (2013)

In this table the least likely roles to be computerised are PR and fund raising managers.   The probability of the editor’s job being computerised is 0.055.  Reporters and correspondents are at 0.11.  Court reporters are at 0.5.  Outside of journalism the least likely to be computerised are recreational therapists with a probability of 0.0028.  The most likely to be computerised, say Frey and Osborne, are telemarketers with a probability of 0.99.

Frey and Osborne refer to further research by Goos and Manning (2007), entitled ‘Lousy and Lovely Jobs’, because it “captures the essence of the current trend towards labour market polarization, with growing employment in high-income cognitive jobs and low-income manual occupations, accompanied by a hollowing-out of middle-income routine jobs.”

In other words, don’t be in the middle where computerisation is more likely to take over the job.

Social intelligence

A major factor which stems the march of computerisation is the employment of humans of social intelligence, Frey and Osborne observe.  They do not define social intelligence but give some examples.  These include creativity, perception and manipulation, negotiation skills and persuasion skills.  Social intelligence relies on our human understanding of each other, our empathy and our ability to use what we call “common sense”.   In other words, being human in a human society.

From all of this we can tease out where the humans may be able to flourish or at least survive in journalism, even in the context of the long march of software.

We can flourish where we have the social intelligence which software currently does not have.  Where we can empathise: to interview people in different situations.  Where we can negotiate for the access to people and data to make our stories.  Where we understand the complexity of the world and are able to capture the vital parts of that complexity and present it to our audiences.

Where we can be

We should avoid being in the middle of any labour process: either be an editor or do a job which software cannot deal with because it means dealing with the complexity of people.

Avoid the routine: the more the job of journalists is a routine, one of creating content from the content given to them, the more vulnerable they are.

Be analytical: some forms of developing AI can do this but they are dependent on vast amounts of data and a large amount of computing power, even at today’s speed and prices.

We can anticipate the future of journalism produced by humans in two ways: by looking at the processes of journalism, on the one hand; and on the other hand, by looking at the types of journalism.

With regard to editorial processes, we can review the skills (the things we can do), the knowledge (the things we know), the attitudes (how we normally see things), and the habits (how we regularly do things), of the job of the human journalists, and see where our strengths and weaknesses are.

We have the skills of writing.  Computers can do this as long as the journalism they generate is of a regular pattern.  We will have to give up the ground of the pyramid story to the computer.  But we have other ways of writing, in long and short form which will take AI  a long time to capture.  We have, for example,  the drop lead story with its quirky or anecdotal opening and varied structure.  Only a deep knowledge of the human reader allows us to employ these and other forms of ‘non-standard’ journalism.

For the moment, we have a monopoly on the skill of interviewing, although AI systems can engage in conversations with humans and gather information, and they may soon be programmed to ‘look’ for a story just as the human journalist does when interviewing.

Then there is our knowledge.  Computers have more information than a human does.  But information is not knowledge.  Knowledge is information with meaning.  At the moment human journalists have the edge here.  We have our social intelligence to give information meaning.

AI systems can only acquire attitude when it is programmed into them. Humans have attitudes as a result of the experience of our social lives as formulated into our social intelligence.

In the area of habits the computer seems to beat the human every time.   It can repeat the same thing without tiring and in the same way every time.  But that does not allow for the mutation of habits which is part of our human development as humans and as individuals.  The capacity both to maintain habits and make a judgment on when such habits need to be adjusted – again, our humanity gives us the advantage.

Human senses

Humans have senses.  Computers can “see” through cameras.  They can “hear” through microphones.   They can “speak” through loudspeakers.  But they cannot enjoy the smell of the flowers, the taste of a crisp and chilled white wine, or the touch of the hand of your lover.   There is no enjoyment nor sorrow in a computer, only the simulation of them.   Here, maybe, is our final advantage.   AI is, is after all, artificial intelligence, not artificial feeling or emotion.   What may seem to be weakness on our part may turn out to be a strength.

Now we can look at some of the types of journalism to see where human action is still, to some extent, required.  I cannot yet predict how fast the computerisation of journalism will develop.  This depends much more on the economic issues – costs versus rewards – as it does on the availability of the technology.  There will be areas where computerisation could be used but the investment is not available.  And there will be times when the computerisation of journalism is set back because it produces such absurd stories that its advocates flinch from pressing forward.  These will come, I think, as computerised journalism enters the areas social intelligence is needed to make sense of the story and AI, lacking in social intelligence, proves unable to do the job. But the boundaries will not stay the same forever; already some pioneers are seeking to press beyond existing limitations.

Ten types of journalism

I use 10 types of journalism and judge them to be either highly susceptible to computerisation, through to moderately susceptible and down to hardly susceptible.  This is not based on a mathematical model as used by Frey and Osborne but on the arguments above about the qualities (and current limitations) of computerised journalism.

It is clear already that the creation of stories from structured data in a pyramid form is highly susceptible to computerisation.  Employers will seek to lower costs and increase speed  of publication, so they will increasingly target this form of journalism.

Equally the ability of AI to sift through large amounts of data rapidly using different approaches will mean that any investigative journalism requiring the discovery of patterns in large data sets is ripe for computerisation.

These would seem to be the first available targets.

The next big target in journalism may well be the reporting of structured events, i.e. events which are structured in much the same way as data is structured.   Any game played by a set of rules is susceptible to computerised journalism, as long it is reported in a pyramid style.  This includes the reporting of sporting events or of court procedures, hence court reporting is high on the list of the types of journalism identified by Frey and Osborne with a 0.5 probability of being subject to AI.

Photo journalism is already subject to technology.  Drones are used to gather images.  But photo journalists with a camera are able to “see” the best shot and to frame it using their social intelligence to tell them where the human action is.   Drones can use cameras to farm images but humans are needed to select the telling image.  Thus the area of photo journalism is a medium term target for computerisation.

Unpredictable events, even if reported in a pyramid style, are harder to computerise: low predictability makes for low risk of computerisation. Conversely, if AI can create patterns which make such events more predictable, then they become more susceptible to computerisation.

A lot of journalism today is reviewing of products and services.  Since this form of journalism is largely dependent on the prior experience which the reviewer deploys as the basis for comparison and evaluation experience, the possibility of computerisation is low.

There are four areas of journalism which have a very low susceptibility to computerisation: interviewing, investigative journalism based on interviewing, commenting and the journalism of self-expression.

The key skill of interviewing depends on the interaction of the journalist and their human subject.   AI systems can mimic the role of humans in conversations but they only mimic it; they do not include the intelligence to focus on what the story is which unfolds in an interview.  Yet.

As a result the forms of investigative journalism which depend on interviewing humans, also have a low susceptibility to computerisation.

Writing comment in editorial and in analytical pieces is well beyond the power of AI at the moment.

Finally, and here is an irony for many professional journalists, the journalism of self-expression, the journalism of emotion, the journalism which entails the journalist’s own experience, is very low on the radar for computerisation. It is technically possible for AI systems to generate this type of journalism, but it seems that readers, listeners and viewers need the human being behind the expression to give it validation.  At the moment.

Ten forms of journalism and their susceptibility to computerisation

There is an eleventh form of journalism which, I think, has a very low susceptibility to computerisation:  headline writing.  What software could come up with such beauties as “Shit hits fan” when Eric Cantona dropped kicked a fan taunting him?  What software could come up with another gem when the Italian designer Versace was killed: “Shoots you, sir!” was a punning eference to a running gag in The Fast Show.  The amount of social intelligence needed to make human  readers, listeners and viewers smile at a good headline is so vast that it may take a very long time before software can write such headlines.  Summary headlines, yes, but gems like these, no.

An answer

I asked above, and did not answer the question: is this to be a long retreat in the face of the computerisation of journalism?  Retreat is the wrong military analogy: instead we should see this as a protracted asymetrical guerrilla war in which we human journalists use the tactics of the flexible power of scattered forces against a massed army.   We will stand where we can but our labour organisations are so weak that we will be defeated, not by the technology itself, but by our employers and the way they deploy it against us.

Journalists have few allies

We journalists do not have many allies, if any at all, in this struggle.  I am not sure that our readers, listeners and viewers, on the whole, mind if they are consuming the journalism of humans or of software.   They do not seem to care that a growing volume of journalism is only content marketing to boost brands.  Some readers, listeners and viewers will and they will follow their favourite human journalists.  But most will not.

Some people will benefit from these developments.  Employers and the shareholders of content generation companies who can exploit these developments will find their profits higher and their productivity soaring as humans are replaced.   Areas of publishing currently under threat because they are loss-making may again become profitable.  AI development companies will also benefit.  So will consultants and those providing the processing power and storage capacity.

So we journalists need to move and keep moving.  Move from the areas most threatened at the moment to areas where our humanity counts more than the speed, low price and accuracy of software journalism.  Move to new areas as yet unexplored which we can innovate in our human practice as journalists.  I cannot yet predict exactly where those areas are, but we shall find them and we shall survive, certainly not in the numbers we are now but with the best values we can have as humans.   I do not want the conclusion to this manifesto to be a wishy-washy assertion of human values; instead it should be a project to project our human values into journalism.  These values include empathy with the subjects of our journalism and the objects of journalism: to communicate with other humans.

We have become used to machines which can lift weights we cannot, to machines which can move faster than we can, to machines which can calculate faster than we can, which can make an image more accurate than we can draw or paint it.  Our humanity is none the less for that. We can lift weights to improve our body shapes rather than to carry a sack of coal.   We can enjoy the experience of a walk despite the existence of fast cars.  We can stretch out our understanding of the world using the speed of calculation afforded by technology.  Remember how we shifted to other forms of expression or representation once photography took hold of the portrait.

I think I have given ample evidence of what we human journalists need to do to sustain our role in journalism, even though the encroachment of software journalism is not under our control.

This manifesto is based on senior lecturer Richard Sharpe’s closing comments at the UEL Future of Journalism seminar in May 2016.

References

Goos, M. and Manning, A. (2007), ‘Lousy and lovely jobs: The rising polarization of work in Britain,’ The Review of Economics and Statistics, vol. 89, no. 1, pp. 118–133

Frey, CB, and Osborne, MA, (2013) The Future of Employment: How susceptible are Jobs to Computerisation?, available at: http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/The_Future_of_Employment.pdf, viewed on 3/7/2016

Today, nearly everyone has the means to report what is going on in the world around them. Even the most basic phone has a camera, and it is simple to post images or capture a video and upload it onto the Internet.

This means that across the world millions of citizen journalists are able to do something that used to be exclusive to professional journalists, namely: to put new content into the public domain; to capture some part of the world and enter what has been captured into the wider world where others can see or hear it.

Consequently citizen journalists are just ordinary people doing the job of reporters. They are not under as many obligations as professional reporters; rather than objectivity or impartiality, their ‘gold standard’ is more likely to be freedom of expression. But this does not mean there is no value in what they have seen and heard and captured. Accordingly, as there is value in such material, so those who provide it should receive payment for it.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not talking about offering payment to some teenager who is blogging (and ranting) away in their bedroom. I’m referring to citizen journalists all around the world who have uploaded on-the-spot audio, video and information before their professional counterparts have even made it out of the hotel.

Global news platforms are increasingly reliant on this kind of user-generated content, but unless the user-generator is unusually canny, for the most part they receive no payment whatsoever.

To my mind, the way this level of short-changing has become standard industry practice, is nothing short of a travesty. Often the story would simply not get out if not for citizen journalists. So why should the international new business get out of paying them for their results (often achieved at considerable risk to themselves)?

For Example, during the Arab Spring, professional journalists were banned or censored by regimes and other powerful individuals who did not want certain stories to be reported. So citizen journalists with mobile phones were almost the sole source of first-hand information. Without citizen reporters, it would have been impossible to create a revolution. Through social media Tunisians encouraged the Egyptians and the Libyans to unite against dictatorship and oppression. Much of this was then fed into the traditional media, with international TV news and national newspapers running stories based on reports filed by citizen journalists.

Without these reporters there would have been next to no first-hand information transmitted to the outside world. So surely it is not beyond the best minds of the international news business to find a way of paying such citizens for the content they provided.

We hear so much about journalism needing a new business model. Perhaps citizens across the world would be more inclined to pay for the journalism they consume, if they thought they might be paid for the journalism they themselves produce.

Fast-forward from an uncomfortable relationship over the last century, public relations now manifests itself in almost every journalistic publication in the millennial generation, especially pertinent in the print sector. More so, print journalism has had an equally sore relationship with its readership, a rapport that has broken down through breakthrough technology (you know, that thing called the Internet) and diverging consumer habits.

Journalism is no longer PR’s advisory, and has pretty much admitted defeat. We’ve witnessed journalism thrive, or at least revive financially through an insurgence of PR influence; they say money doesn’t equal happiness, but then again, neither does being unemployed. The publishing tightrope is especially tricky in these unusually uncertain times: too many hard-hitting facts means your content is ‘too hard’ and you’re out of business; complete subservience to revenue streams and you’re nothing more than putty in the hands of PR.

The digital industry hasn’t got off scot-free either. PR has flexed its muscle here as elsewhere.

One of the ways in which PR and journalism have rekindled their relationship is by extending the practice of paid-for editorials. By no means entirely new, they used to stick out a mile (and people would pass right over them); but now, carefully threaded between your weekly column and showbiz gossip, the ‘advertorial’ has become the epitome of ingenious advertising. At first glance, nothing looks out of place. Either as a written piece or video short, the advert is designed to look native, natural and enriching to the publication. The best example is BBC’s Good Food, which now includes extensive collection of Co-op-augmented foodie guides. Although brilliantly crafted, and actually rather informative, there’s a catch: the perfect cheeseboard you are encouraged to create, is comprised of entirely of cheeses purchased exclusively at the Co-op.

I now know that the three month cave-aged Wookey Hole Cheddar has a deep complex flavour (the moisture levels and temperature in the caves are particularly conducive to it). I also know where to buy it, and I am even less likely to show an interest in other cave-matured cheeses which I might possibly have purchased some place else.

You get what you click on; and there’s a price to be paid.

You Tube is another prime site for viewing the changing balance of forces between PR and journalism. Thousands of YouTube personalities across the Internet are top targets for advertorial injections. ‘YouTubers’ are the millennial celebrities, and a generation of adoring fans tune in to watch, and be influenced by, their videos every day. Product placement seems to be the biggest hit. Top 10 product lists littered across the Internet are more than often rigged, and reviews can be heavily skewed by commercial obligations.

A particular example involves YouTube personality ‘Anna Akana’. After being accused of ‘selling out’ to advertising brands such as Audible and clothing line Ghost and Stars, she received negative criticism – sometimes amounting to death threats. Her response was as follows:

“If a sell out is someone who puts high value on their work, then sure. If a sell out is someone who recognizes that money frees up your time to work on non-paying passion projects, awesome! If a sell out is someone who loves what they do, but also wants to make a living at it, then yeah, call her a sell out.”

It would be hypocritical to finger point, though. At one stage or another I bet every professional journalist has relaxed his or her moral and ethical commitments to the public in order to stay in the job.

The ‘truth’ is no longer important in millennial media. The Guardian estimates that 75% of entertainment stories, and 50 to 80% of news and business stories emanate from public relations – which doesn’t mean they are not true, but it does mean these are truths constructed and disseminated for promotional purposes. Other studies put the figure as high as 98%; the stats are overwhelming.

The real ‘truth’ is that almost everything you read, and every opinion you formulate, is partly because it was designed to be so. Of course, journalism by design isn’t a new phenomenon. From early Nazi propaganda to the political influence of the red tops, the spirit of editorial independence – supposedly without fear or favour, has always been used and abused.

It seems as though public relations will live on, with or without journalism. But it is scary to think that in 20 years’ time a publication you now trust for its editorial independence could be not much more than a saturated Argos catalogue.

Sources

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2003/nov/17/mondaymediasection3

http://londonprogressivejournal.com/article/view/1246

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/howto/guide/native/guide-cheese-how-make-perfect-cheeseboard

http://qz.com/419424/watch-popular-youtuber-explains-why-she-sold-out/

The Spectator (1711) was one of the founding documents of modern journalism. Ushering in a new kind of publication, it also identified a new kind of job – the journalist – with a new social role, that of the eponymous spectator. Ever since, it has been assumed that the journalist’s top priority is to inform the masses of pressing issues and stories which are within the public interest, while trying to remain objective and impartial – otherwise it’s bias; otherwise, they’re not doing their job, right?

So why was the backlash against Kevin Carter’s infamous Southern Sudan photograph so intensely negative – so much so that it may have been a factor in his subsequent suicide? Also, now that the distinction between journalist and citizen may have been partly broken down with the phenomenon of the ‘citizen journalist’, should we expect the people playing this role to react as journalists or act as concerned citizens? If the former, then being a spectator is still, on balance, how we are supposed to be; but if the latter, then citizen journalists may stand accused of being culpable ‘bystanders’, i.e. guilty of standing by when they should have intervened instead.

First I will re-visit what happened to Kevin Carter, before considering the re-configuration of this ethical issue in the context of ‘we the media’, i.e. more of the general population being able to operate as journalists (more or less).

Kevin and another photojournalist, João Silva, both traveled to Ayod, Sudan (South Sudan) on 11 March 1993 with the United Nations (UN). They were embedded in Operation Lifeline Sudan, a humanitarian campaign to deliver assistance to those in need in war-torn countries. Both went as photojournalists to report on the ripples of famine, poverty and destructiveness the civil war was creating. Carter and Silva were ordered to not touch anyone, to reduce the risk of bringing any infections and diseases back with them to America.

The two photojournalists only had 30 minutes in Sudan to take enough photographs to portray the destructiveness of war for the rest of the world to see.
Kevin, according to João was shocked at the state of Sudan and proceeded to take photographs of the suffering children – meanwhile their parents were queuing for food aid from the UN. This was when Kevin saw the child that we now know as the Struggling Girl; Carter stayed 10 metres away from the girl whilst the vulture landed behind.

He took his pictures and only then proceeded to scare the bird away.

When Carter and Silva returned to America, The New York Times bought Kevin’s picture and the photograph was published on March 26, 1993. Overnight, the NYT received floods of responses asking about the little girl’s fate – the paper did not have a proper answer.

The world accused Kevin of using the malnourished girl as a prop and not a person, saying that he should have helped the little girl instead of taking the picture. One criticism came from the St. Petersburg Times in Florida: ‘the man adjusting his lens to take just the right frame of her suffering, might just as well be a predator, another vulture on the scene.’

What people choose to ignore is that it was Kevin Carter’s job to report on the state of Sudan. In a way, he had to use the child as a prop in the photograph not only to portray what was happening, but, perhaps more importantly, in order for what he knew to be happening, to have any impact in the outside world.

In the same way that ‘sex sells’ in the entertainment industry, journalists know that ‘if it bleeds, it leads’.

And let me reiterate, Kevin and João were ordered to not touch any of the Sudan civilians.

Photojournalism should carry a complex story and explain it with one picture, or sequence of pictures. Kevin portrayed the state of poverty, helplessness, famine and destructiveness all within one photograph, because it was his job to do so. The visual language of this photograph is universal and therefore, the real conditions in Sudan were shown around the world.

If Kevin had let his personal morals get in the way of his job, the world would have never known about the Sudan girl – or the state of the country. Accordingly, although the photographer was widely criticised, the photograph was also much revered. It won Kevin Carter the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography in 1994 – but sadly, three months later, he took his own life.

Since then, such situations have become potentially even more fraught because the position of the journalist has become even more questionable. Facilitated by digital technology, the advent of the ‘citizen journalist’ suggests that we expect people playing this role to be concerned citizens first and journalists second. Moreover, this expectation of quasi-journalists, surely has implications for what the public expect of professional journalists, given that the line between them is nowhere near as clear as it was in the old days of reporters versus their sources.

For a citizen journalist to take this picture without helping the little girl, then I should think the uproar would have been ten times greater. Kevin’s role as a photojournalist took over, whereas if a citizen journalist was fiddling with the lens in order to take this picture, then it would raise some very imperative questions – such as, why was the urge to reach for a camera stronger than the urge to help others in life-threatening situations?

Looking back to the 1990s, my position is as follows: Kevin’s photograph would and should have been taken by somebody else, if not by him, that day. Kevin wasn’t in the wrong for capturing the Sudan child; the world was at fault for losing sight of his job, his responsibilities and the orders he had been given.

But it may be that the situation is not so orderly now as it was then.

We have always been narcissistic: the Internet only allows us to express this side of ourselves more easily. If the cave men had Instagram they would have been posting selfies too, and updating the world on their latest cave paintings.

The problem for journalism is how to connect with a generation which does narcissism to the max, without allowing itself to be reduced to the same level. After all, interest in other people – rather than ourselves – must be one of the defining characteristics of journalism, right?

The latest in the selfie trend is the chelfie. This is taking selfies in shop changing room mirrors, and uploading them to get instant approval before buying a new outfit. Head designer and creative director of Chanel, Karl Lagerfeld, has even put iPads in the flagship Chanel store so all visitors can take chelfies.

A recent survey published on WGSN, the leading trend forecaster, shows that the amount of chelfie posts on Twitter has doubled in the last three months. Women wait for an average of three likes before making a purchase, and men wait for at least four; but some admit they won’t make the purchase if it gets less than 10 likes.

People always want opinions on what they are buying and this is just the latest way of getting them – before the chelfie, they would ask the opinion of the shop assistants and whoever they were out shopping with. The chelfie is just doing this but on a much larger scale – asking the opinions of people from all around the world in seconds.

Pollpic is an app that has been inspired by the chelfie trend. It allows you to simply take a chelfie and put it to the vote of friends and the public.

But when people start dying while trying to take the perfect selfie it should be proof that the obsession has gone too far.

Phoebe Luckhurst’s article ‘From tragic selfie deaths to instagramming on the go- its official, vanity has gone viral’, talks about how Instagram has made everyone narcissistic, but in reality if they did not self-advertise on that particular platform, they would just find another way of doing it.

People take selfies as a way to showcase their lives. The likes give you more self-confidence and can make you feel like you are living your life in the right way.
People are trying to fill the social media norm of making their lives look extraordinary, they will spend ages looking for the perfect angle and perfect lighting. But because everyone knows how long they spend doing, this it is not as impressive. We are all just living in a false reality.

You can make yourself and your life look better, because you have control and you can take the photo as many times as you want, without having to bother other people. Then you can pick the perfect filter and crop the photo to hide your imperfections. You have control over how your life looks; you only post the photos on Instagram that you want other people to see.

But has it gone too far? You no longer have to talk to your friends and tell them what you are doing because they will see it online. This is fine up to a certain point, but Instagram shouldn’t stop us socialising in the real world.

The important thing for everyone to remember in this selfie-chelfie world, is that you are not defined by the amount of likes you get.

Something else for journalists to think about, is that the chelfie – however self-indulgent – is also a mirror to the times; chelfies reveal the needs, desires and above all the anxieties of millions of people. Taken together, therefore, they also provide documentation of who we are and what we are worried about. So it’s up to journalists to find a way of using the chelfie as a resource for describing and understanding the times we live in.

I mean, that is journalism’s job, isn’t it?