ESCHER-SKETCH When prompted to produce an ‘M.C. Escher-esque’ image, the AI demurred due to its arcane ambiguity regarding copyright law. Then, it made the image above. Image by DALL-E 2.
When New York Magazine was putting together its recent juggernaut “future of journalism” issue (breathlessly, if ironically, headlined, “Media Elites Tell All!”), they, um, forgot to interview me.
Maybe their query was caught in my spam folder (it wasn’t; I checked), or perhaps I’m not elite enough. I’m certainly media enough—I used to say, “I put the ‘me’ in media,” but now, thanks to Grammarly, I put the “me” in “meta” and save the “I” for “media.”
Naturally, The Nation replied to New York with the headline, “Media Elites Are the Last People to Ask About the Future of Journalism.”
In the piece, DC bureau chief Chris Lehmann contends that the mag focuses excessively on business models and platform strategies and neglects journalism’s fundamental role in fostering an informed citizenry. OK, but who will point the way?
Though no one asked, Elon Musk offered an idea: “You are the media now,” which is one way of passing the buck without actually passing any actual bucks. He can keep ’em. As Jeff Bezos proved with The Washington Post, billionaires and media mix like gin and colonics.
Besides, they’ve taken all the fun out of being a lefty media prankster. I can’t stoop to their level nor afford their heights. Best to keep my sights trained on the upper-middlebrow, which has long been my forte. As Dorothy Parker said, “I write doodads because it’s a doodad kind of town.”
At least we know that Parker wrote that line herself (or at least a human screenwriter wrote it for Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle).
“I think we might reach 90% of online content generated by AI by 2025, so this technology is exponential,” said Nina Schick, an AI thought leader, in a recent Yahoo Finance Live appearance. “I believe that the majority of digital content is going to start to be produced by AI. You see ChatGPT... but there are a whole plethora of other platforms and applications that are coming up.”
Indeed. AI can generate a credible simulacrum of my voice and style at a fraction of my exorbitant cost. (I mean, why use a five-cent word when the expense of a 50-cent word can be passed on to the publisher?)
Oddly, letters to the editor accuse my human reporters of being robots, while the actual robots go unnoticed until they have to accept an award, and I have to awkwardly take the podium on their behalf. I mean, I’m no Sacheen Littlefeather (well, it turns out she wasn’t either), but accepting an award for a trend rapidly proving to be the most destructive force to alternative newsweeklies since Craigslist destroyed the adult personal ad market is a special kind of mind-f*ck.
Journalism will prevail in some form or other. We survived the internet. We survived social media. And we will survive this AI-driven, underfunded, non-consensual reality run by tech oligarchs. It doesn’t take a media elite to see that. Besides, they will all eventually end up on email newsletter platform Substack. After four decades as a self-described “transatlantic media diva,” former New Yorker and Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown has launched a newsletter (Fresh Hell). There’s even a phalanx of email newsletterists at my pubs Pacific Sun and the Bohemian.
Email. Who’d’ve thunk the most basic communication tool of the Information Age would prove that everything old is news again? —DH
P.S….
Speaking of AI…
A family friend in academics (who should’ve known better, haha), introduced my stepson to Google’s NotebookLM initiative — a sort of AI-powered research assistant marketed with the tagline “Think Smarter, Not Harder.” Said stepson decided to troll me using the platform’s AI-hosted “Deep Dive” podcast generator and my Wikipedia page. The results, in a word, are uncanny. Have a listen…
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Press Pass with Daedalus Howell to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.