One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

by Omar El Akkad

articles that read like traditional news stories, but would not exist had the advertiser not paid for them. Can management force reporters to take on such assignments, treat them no different than real news? The two sides of the bargaining table had very different opinions on the matter. At the time, the reporters were livid. Today, after countless rounds of layoffs and the prospect of AI-generated noise coming to replace human-written stories of any kind, it almost seems quaint. Journalists are human. They have mortgages and bills. They work jobs so precarious, demanding, and poorly paying that about half the cohort of reporters I began my career with now work in public relations. There’s a reason journalism boasts one of the highest divorce rates of any industry. You work weird hours. You get yelled at a lot. You’re asked to write five listicles a day for the web traffic. You’re asked to do a professional videographer’s job on the side, with your iPhone. Your mistakes are a matter of public record, forever.