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Newsmakers: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Journalism
Will the use of artificial intelligence (AI), algorithms, and smart machines be the end of journalism as we know it―or its savior? In Newsmakers , Francesco Marconi, who has led the development of the Associated Press and Wall Street Journal ’s use of AI in journalism, offers a new perspective on the potential of these technologies. He explains how reporters, editors, and newsrooms of all sizes can take advantage of the possibilities they provide to develop new ways of telling stories and connecting with readers.
Marconi analyzes the challenges and opportunities of AI through case studies ranging from financial publications using algorithms to write earnings reports to investigative reporters analyzing large data sets to outlets determining the distribution of news on social media. Newsmakers contends that AI can augment―not automate―the industry, allowing journalists to break more news more quickly while simultaneously freeing up their time for deeper analysis. Marshaling insights drawn from firsthand experience, Marconi maps a media landscape transformed by artificial intelligence for the better. In addition to considering the benefits of these new technologies, Marconi stresses the continuing need for editorial and institutional oversight. Newsmakers outlines the important questions that journalists and media organizations should consider when integrating AI and algorithms into their workflow. For journalism students as well as seasoned media professionals, Marconi’s insights provide much-needed clarity and a practical roadmap for how AI can best serve journalism.
Marconi analyzes the challenges and opportunities of AI through case studies ranging from financial publications using algorithms to write earnings reports to investigative reporters analyzing large data sets to outlets determining the distribution of news on social media. Newsmakers contends that AI can augment―not automate―the industry, allowing journalists to break more news more quickly while simultaneously freeing up their time for deeper analysis. Marshaling insights drawn from firsthand experience, Marconi maps a media landscape transformed by artificial intelligence for the better. In addition to considering the benefits of these new technologies, Marconi stresses the continuing need for editorial and institutional oversight. Newsmakers outlines the important questions that journalists and media organizations should consider when integrating AI and algorithms into their workflow. For journalism students as well as seasoned media professionals, Marconi’s insights provide much-needed clarity and a practical roadmap for how AI can best serve journalism.
216 pages, Paperback
Published April 7, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 19, 2025
There is a spelling mistake on the second page, a mislabelled figure twenty-five later and a formatting blunder across pages 42 to 44 that I hope embarrasses Columbia University Press even today, half a decade post the initial publication of Newmakers. It would be remiss of me to stop there: a grammatical error on page 41, an unintended double negative on page 92, and the very first source cited (in the preface) is reworded in a partially misleading manner. I digress, but know that I could easily continue.
The author of these mistakes, Francesco Marconi, insists that "AI can augment - not automate - the [journalism] industry", despite repeatedly extolling the efficiencies of automation across the preceding 152 pages. His own index lists fifteen pages where "automation" is found at least once, nearly a tenth of the entire book, which overwhelmingly feature the word in a neutral or positive context. Furthermore, the indexing does not account for instances of "automated" or phrases such as "automatically create", both of which are littered throughout. Regardless of what Marconi wishes to convince himself, the distinction between augmentation and automation is functionally meaningless; at best, arbitrary and safely ignored; at worst, deliberately obfuscating how artificial intelligence (AI) threatens the livelihoods of journalists with needless semantics.
Newsmakers revolves around the titular term, an archetype defined by Marconi as someone who "makes news using new tools at her disposal... being asked to be a technologist" in a world of rapid technological change. This hypothetical journalist, and Mary Sue of artificial intelligence implementation in the workplace, is a convenient vehicle with which Marconi wishes to drive home his thesis that AI is inevitable and any journalist worth their salt should incorporate the technology into their workflow to survive and "thrive in this current era of digital change". But Marconi cannot keep his fictional premise consistent. On page 8, the Newsmaker wants to utilise AI not because it is the "next big thing" but because she has identified a "major newsroom pain point" that the technology can help resolve. Yet, this is at odds with the second paragraph of the book, where Marconi describes an editor ordering the Newsmaker to "leverage artificial intelligence... to create efficiencies in the newsroom". So, what is the Newsmaker? An aspiring computational journalist with initiative or a worker pushed towards a trend from the top down? The truth is that the Newsmaker is whatever Marconi needs it to be in the moment, a fickle and unaccountable literary device with which he wants to whitewash and normalise widespread AI adoption.
When measuring the supposed benefits of AI on journalism, the evidence provided is often limited to how an outlet was able to dramatically scale the volume of its "content", a frequent description for journalistic output that left a sour taste in my mouth every time I read it. Lip service is paid to the glaring issues left in the wake of unregulated AI, such as the rise in misinformation, the perils of deepfakes and the blatant violation of copyright that AI effectively necessitates to function. But these considerations are implicitly hand-waved away by Marconi's repeated assurance that the Newsmaker will be careful, without ever convincingly detailing how. A comical example is when Marconi mentions that the proliferation of "text personalization" raises an important ethical issue regarding "information bubbles", also known as echo-chambers, but spends much of the book in awe of how efficiently AI can personalise "content" for individuals based on where they live, their age and other demographic factors, effectively advocating for an exacerbation of the phenomenon.
I can forgive grammatical, spelling and formatting inaccuracies in the service or interest of a greater goal, but Marconi's conceptualisation of journalism is broken at its core. Knowingly or (more likely) otherwise, the recurrent use of "content" to reference the work that journalists publish is emblematic of contemporary journalistic degradation. Quality? Legitimacy? Legacy concepts that have been replaced by a pathological obsession with audience capture and milking every second of attention for advertising revenue. Journalism is no longer (not that it ever institutionally was) about confronting readers with difficult truths or examining society with a cynical, discerning eye, but is now instead about letting the audience dictate to so-called Newsmakers what should be written, from a list the powers that be have sanctioned them to be interested in, funnelled through a hollow fascimile of human intelligence that mirrors our biases underneath a fascade of technological impartiality.
Marconi does not seem to understand or contemplate that what people are interested in is very much at the behest of the media conglomerates that dominate our information environment. The recent growth of independent journalism can be correlated with a craving for authenticity; to be able to trust that what you are being told is not only accurate, but coming from a fundamentally good place. Marconi concludes that the Newsmaker is heartened in "knowing that no algorithm will ever take over her journalistic judgment". He has not convinced me to be so naive.
The author of these mistakes, Francesco Marconi, insists that "AI can augment - not automate - the [journalism] industry", despite repeatedly extolling the efficiencies of automation across the preceding 152 pages. His own index lists fifteen pages where "automation" is found at least once, nearly a tenth of the entire book, which overwhelmingly feature the word in a neutral or positive context. Furthermore, the indexing does not account for instances of "automated" or phrases such as "automatically create", both of which are littered throughout. Regardless of what Marconi wishes to convince himself, the distinction between augmentation and automation is functionally meaningless; at best, arbitrary and safely ignored; at worst, deliberately obfuscating how artificial intelligence (AI) threatens the livelihoods of journalists with needless semantics.
Newsmakers revolves around the titular term, an archetype defined by Marconi as someone who "makes news using new tools at her disposal... being asked to be a technologist" in a world of rapid technological change. This hypothetical journalist, and Mary Sue of artificial intelligence implementation in the workplace, is a convenient vehicle with which Marconi wishes to drive home his thesis that AI is inevitable and any journalist worth their salt should incorporate the technology into their workflow to survive and "thrive in this current era of digital change". But Marconi cannot keep his fictional premise consistent. On page 8, the Newsmaker wants to utilise AI not because it is the "next big thing" but because she has identified a "major newsroom pain point" that the technology can help resolve. Yet, this is at odds with the second paragraph of the book, where Marconi describes an editor ordering the Newsmaker to "leverage artificial intelligence... to create efficiencies in the newsroom". So, what is the Newsmaker? An aspiring computational journalist with initiative or a worker pushed towards a trend from the top down? The truth is that the Newsmaker is whatever Marconi needs it to be in the moment, a fickle and unaccountable literary device with which he wants to whitewash and normalise widespread AI adoption.
When measuring the supposed benefits of AI on journalism, the evidence provided is often limited to how an outlet was able to dramatically scale the volume of its "content", a frequent description for journalistic output that left a sour taste in my mouth every time I read it. Lip service is paid to the glaring issues left in the wake of unregulated AI, such as the rise in misinformation, the perils of deepfakes and the blatant violation of copyright that AI effectively necessitates to function. But these considerations are implicitly hand-waved away by Marconi's repeated assurance that the Newsmaker will be careful, without ever convincingly detailing how. A comical example is when Marconi mentions that the proliferation of "text personalization" raises an important ethical issue regarding "information bubbles", also known as echo-chambers, but spends much of the book in awe of how efficiently AI can personalise "content" for individuals based on where they live, their age and other demographic factors, effectively advocating for an exacerbation of the phenomenon.
I can forgive grammatical, spelling and formatting inaccuracies in the service or interest of a greater goal, but Marconi's conceptualisation of journalism is broken at its core. Knowingly or (more likely) otherwise, the recurrent use of "content" to reference the work that journalists publish is emblematic of contemporary journalistic degradation. Quality? Legitimacy? Legacy concepts that have been replaced by a pathological obsession with audience capture and milking every second of attention for advertising revenue. Journalism is no longer (not that it ever institutionally was) about confronting readers with difficult truths or examining society with a cynical, discerning eye, but is now instead about letting the audience dictate to so-called Newsmakers what should be written, from a list the powers that be have sanctioned them to be interested in, funnelled through a hollow fascimile of human intelligence that mirrors our biases underneath a fascade of technological impartiality.
Marconi does not seem to understand or contemplate that what people are interested in is very much at the behest of the media conglomerates that dominate our information environment. The recent growth of independent journalism can be correlated with a craving for authenticity; to be able to trust that what you are being told is not only accurate, but coming from a fundamentally good place. Marconi concludes that the Newsmaker is heartened in "knowing that no algorithm will ever take over her journalistic judgment". He has not convinced me to be so naive.
March 29, 2024
God bok om hvordan kunstig intelligens kan brukes til å utvide journalistikkens påvirkning og effektivitet. Den tar for seg hele samlebåndet: fra idéutvikling til oppfølging av publiserte saker. Den er skrevet på et lettlest språk, men vær forberedt på å ha en oversetter på siden, spesielt om du ikke er kjent med journalistisk terminologi på engelsk. Den får fire av fem stjerner fra meg utelukkende fordi jeg synes den er litt for kort og kunne gjerne fokusert mer på farene og eventualiteter som kan komme med bruken av kunstig intelligens i nyhetsformidling. Den tar opp disse temaene, men ikke nok. Dette blir likevel hovedlitteratur til min bacheloroppgave.
June 13, 2020
The case for government intervention for the lazy and stupid, the ones who got into school expecting nothing will change from the days of their grandfather. Of course, Marconi wants his smartphone, but he also wants the taxpayer to be fleeced for his guild's personal gains.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews