News is No Longer News, Technology Disrupting Traditional Journalism.
Already we are hearing stories of AI composing music, drawing pictures, etc. Can you imagine reading a novel or a newspaper written by a robot published online? Algorithms already control what we consume online. Soon the content production online will be controlled by the internet. According to Gartner, by 2022, AI and similar technology will automate the production of 30% of all content found on the internet.
The Machines Are Coming
GPT-3 Open AI’s natural language generator in 2020 wrote an article for The Guardian newspaper titled, “A robot wrote this entire article. Are you scared yet, human?”. The robot might have not yet reached the full potential of disrupting the newspaper industry but it worth reflecting on the future of the sector and journalism at large. What if robots can put together better articles than human beings based on data and facts available online? What if this article was written by a robot?
A skill called, “Social Intelligence” might be the only way out to writers according to Institute For The Future. Social intelligence is the ability to connect to others in a deep and direct way. It requires adaptive thinking, cross-culture compatibility, and virtual collaboration. Naturally, a human being can possess some of those skills and attain a competitive advantage against a machine by being able to write articles capitalizing on human emotions but it is necessary to understand the need to emphasize them.
Instead of adopting purely Artificial Intelligence in the newsrooms Augmented Intelligence, can be the practical way forward. The goal shouldn’t be to replace the human being in the newsroom but to enhance their capability to offer timely, unbiased, rich, and accurate information to the consumers. The goal of AI should be to assist to enhance journalist capabilities instead of replacing them in the newsroom.
These days I no longer pay attention to what is suggested on the YouTube Home page or Twitter Timeline because I know for a fact a certain percentage of it will be from the platform owners wanting me to consume what they think is right. I wanted to name this article Media 4.0 but that is what actually the meaning of what I have just explained, Media 4.0 is about using AI to meet viewers’ preferences is one of the latest technologies powering online shows and movie streaming. As we are getting deep into the platform and sharing economy one of the sector that will be massively disrupted is the media industry and the news subsector.
In Media 4.0 , AI is used to automate the production and distribution of media to any device on-demand — has been around for several years. Whereas Media
1.0–3.0 represented the evolution of media from film and theater to radio and television broadcasting and finally to the current IP-based landscape, 4.0 can best be illustrated by the music industry’s use of big data and the cloud to provide the personalization of media consumption down to a granular level — Paul Shen, founder of TVU
When Craig Newmark, the founder of Craigslist started listing job opportunities and apartments for rents, the revenue from newspaper classified ads of prominent newspapers in cities goes down less than a third between 2005 and 2009. The revenue generated in 2005 was $16 billion. Hence, digital disruption is not a new thing for the traditional media industry. The problem is, everything is changing now and the internet wants more than just classifieds.
News is No Longer News
News is no longer news — Ruge Mutahaba. By the time you publish your newspaper or prepare yourself for the evening news things are already all over the place online. 86 percent of Americans access news online via their Smartphones — PewResearch. According to Ofcom’s Annual News Consumption Report, half of the adults in the UK use social media to keep up with the latest news. There is a huge concern about the future of traditional media houses. Technology is playing a massive role in disrupting the sector. The sector is facing the need for new talents, revisiting business models, and planning to stay relevant or being phased out.
According to GSMA recent reports, there are 747 million SIM connections in sub-Saharan Africa, representing 75% of the population while according to Dataxis, among the 215 million households in SSA, around 102 million have access to television in 2018. The exponential adoption of mobile phones in the continent is a blessing in disguise. While traditional news platforms will be disrupted signs are it will also create opportunities for new forms of media. While you might say the disruption is the age thing and we shouldn’t be concerned. There some recent research that shows the newspaper readership percentage has begun to decline across all age groups, even those over 50 — Scarborough Research. Why this is happening? Is technology taking over?
Social Media has pushed individuals to become powerful media houses pushing information and shaping narratives. We are moving from institutional media houses to individuals. It is normal now for a regional popular musician in Africa to have more than 5 Million. Some musicians such as Burna Boy (6.3 Mn) and Diamond Platnumz (11.9 Mn) have passed that cap already. An average radio, TV, or newspaper operating in the region at the national or sub-national level will have far fewer numbers than that. The challenge becomes competing for similar markets. Clients looking to promote a new product will prefer social media influencers to traditional media platforms for two main reasons; it has always been tough to generate scientific facts and evidence of reach and traction using traditional media, and second, depending on whom you target, you might have a difficult time to package your message.
Friction of Powers
Digital platforms make journalism more vibrant and fragile. It is very difficult to control who posts what for who. While old media houses are like currency held by few new media it operates like a current it just flows. You can not centralize it, and it is peer drive. While we have a clear definition of who is a “Journalist”, we will continue to struggle to categorize individuals who practice “Digital Journalism” without professional journalism background. The friction between the two types of journalism is already creating a lot of tensions; while traditional journalism is based on a formal setup, confidentiality, centralized leadership, and accuracy, digital journalism is based on informal setup, radical transparency, and freedom.
Conclusion
While publishers in the advanced economy saw the disruption early and have found ways to continue to survive and stay relevant most of the media house are struggling to lay down strategies and plans on how they are going to navigate the disruption. They have tried multiple approaches and adopted a few that works including finding ways to work with aggregators in a more productive way by capitalizing on the platforms to generate traffic. The challenge has always been the fear of losing power and control of your content and traffic to the aggregators. Some of the media houses have decided to develop their own digital platforms and become more innovative by creating different value propositions for their customers. It is necessary for media houses to start strategizing for the present and the future and put together strategies on how they handle digital disruption.
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