I agree real journalism was at death's door long before AI.

It doesn't help that any article you click on noawadays is locked behind a paywall or asks you to turn off ad blockers. I immediately ditch the story if it does this.

The problem here is that AP feeds openai and Gemini with their propaganda and gets paid for it. They are not dying, just pivoting.

X and GROK are the only trustworthy sources now. ChatGPT is propaganda, as is anything from Google.

Logos Stick said:

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The problem here is that AP feeds openai and Gemini with their propaganda and gets paid for it. They are not dying, just pivoting.

X and GROK are the only trustworthy sources now. ChatGPT is propaganda, as is anything from Google.

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AI is probably worse than news reporting. At least I know that if I am dealing with X newspaper, I have a feel for its biases.

The AI engines have all the same biases, but less information about them. And even "intelligent" people are more prone to defer to AI's "expertise".

BTW, just saw an interesting article which confirmed this experimentally.

I'm gonna avoid this thread.

There's appetite for independent journalism like what we're seeing with the fraud scandals being exposed by that Nick fella. The only thing standing in the journos way is their own biases and laziness. Get out and work!

"Journalism" killed journalism.

Not trying to defend the sorry state of journalism, but without people putting out actual articles, where is AI going to get its info? Even more from Reddit/twitter/etc?

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it seems to me that in killing off news reporting, we are forced to rely on more unoriginal AI slop to replace it.

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They're not journalists, they are political activists. Let them learn to code. Oh, wait, learn to plumb…

MemphisAg1 said:

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Liberals killed journalism long before AI was even a concept.

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And AP "journalist" haven't been able to write a correctly formatted news article by providing the who, what, where, when, why and how, in decades.

There articles are typically just a compilation of quotes and many from anonymous sources.

Pretty easy, really…

Opinions are meaningless

Just present the facts

sanangelo said:

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I'm gonna avoid this thread.

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You shouldn't. You're a journalist so your opinion matters in a way mine doesn't. It's undeniable that the corporate media has ruined its own reputation with dishonesty and political bias. Left or right is secondary to the fact that they aren't trustworthy.

Can you admit that? If so what's the solution? You avoiding the topic doesn't make it go away.

techno-ag said:

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Love that the Fox News guy is a Rhinoceros instead of an elephant

Pretty clever

MemphisAg1 said:

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Liberals killed journalism long before AI was even a concept.

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LOYAL AG said:

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sanangelo said:

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I'm gonna avoid this thread.

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You shouldn't. You're a journalist so your opinion matters in a way mine doesn't. It's undeniable that the corporate media has ruined its own reputation with dishonesty and political bias. Left or right is secondary to the fact that they aren't trustworthy.

Can you admit that? If so what's the solution? You avoiding the topic doesn't make it go away.

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"Journalists" being unwilling to admit to their own biases was the start of the problem and throwing away any semblance of neutrality over the last 10 years put the dagger through the concept of honest journalism as it was once known. Even the journalism professors are no longer trying to hide it. They are openly teaching that today's "journalists" should be persuaders instead of reporters, which is what got the one we tried to hire from tu and her dean fired a few years ago.

Private equity and hedge funds did a number on a lot of local newspapers.

LOYAL AG said:

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sanangelo said:

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I'm gonna avoid this thread.

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You shouldn't. You're a journalist so your opinion matters in a way mine doesn't. It's undeniable that the corporate media has ruined its own reputation with dishonesty and political bias. Left or right is secondary to the fact that they aren't trustworthy.

Can you admit that? If so what's the solution? You avoiding the topic doesn't make it go away.

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The core problem is finding sustainable revenue models for local and independent journalism.

In both sports and political media, "parachute journalism" rules: The New York Times (usually with a leftward slant) breaks a story, and everyone else just rewrites it. In Texas sports media, one negative Matt Stepp tweet about Aggie football can get parroted across the entire industry.

Google and Facebook have vacuumed up nearly all the digital ad revenue, leaving everyone else fighting over scraps. That's why most outlets struggle to do anything truly creative or in-depth.

Ben Shapiro's Daily Wire has done an excellent job building a loyal audience, but even they get hit hard Apple takes about a third of their programmatic podcast ad revenue, and Roku takes another third. That's a big reason why serious independent outlets are moving toward monthly subscription models instead of relying on ads.

The Dallas Morning News basically turned their ad sales team into a general ad agency. A few years ago, their biggest client was a car dealership in Indianapolis. At that point, ad revenue is completely divorced from the actual publication and its readership.

There are some upsides to programmatic ads. I make 10-15% of my monthly revenue from them, which gives me the freedom to keep the platform accessible to everyone and not be beholden to a single big local advertiser. It also lets me break controversial stories without fear.

The downside is that there still simply isn't enough money in the current model to support a full-scale investigative journalism operation here in San Angelo.

This might be the best thing AI could ever do. Eliminate journalism.

MemphisAg1 said:

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Liberals killed journalism long before AI was even a concept.

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True. But for now AI is Garbage In, Garbage Out.

Journalism is easy to manipulate when created by AI, just taint the source data pool.

sanangelo said:

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LOYAL AG said:

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sanangelo said:

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I'm gonna avoid this thread.

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You shouldn't. You're a journalist so your opinion matters in a way mine doesn't. It's undeniable that the corporate media has ruined its own reputation with dishonesty and political bias. Left or right is secondary to the fact that they aren't trustworthy.

Can you admit that? If so what's the solution? You avoiding the topic doesn't make it go away.

---

The core problem is finding sustainable revenue models for local and independent journalism.

In both sports and political media, "parachute journalism" rules: The New York Times (usually with a leftward slant) breaks a story, and everyone else just rewrites it. In Texas sports media, one negative Matt Stepp tweet about Aggie football can get parroted across the entire industry.

Google and Facebook have vacuumed up nearly all the digital ad revenue, leaving everyone else fighting over scraps. That's why most outlets struggle to do anything truly creative or in-depth.

Ben Shapiro's Daily Wire has done an excellent job building a loyal audience, but even they get hit hard Apple takes about a third of their programmatic podcast ad revenue, and Roku takes another third. That's a big reason why serious independent outlets are moving toward monthly subscription models instead of relying on ads.

The Dallas Morning News basically turned their ad sales team into a general ad agency. A few years ago, their biggest client was a car dealership in Indianapolis. At that point, ad revenue is completely divorced from the actual publication and its readership.

There are some upsides to programmatic ads. I make 10-15% of my monthly revenue from them, which gives me the freedom to keep the platform accessible to everyone and not be beholden to a single big local advertiser. It also lets me break controversial stories without fear.

The downside is that there still simply isn't enough money in the current model to support a full-scale investigative journalism operation here in San Angelo.

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Appreciate that detailed response about the current economics of journalism. That's honestly why I wanted you to respond as I think you're the only "traditional" journalist on this forum. Your take matters here. The revenue discussion is interesting but to me your biggest threat is X. Its always in and someone is always there to break the story. That's impossible for you to compete with. And it's free. I have no clue how to monetize an X account but to me thats where news needs to be monetized. Good luck. Rough industry right now and that's probably not changing.

There was a time that I could watch the news and then easily figure out what was going on.

These days I have to read/watch 10-20 different sources and spend time trying to figure out what the truth actually is. The spin machine is exhausting.

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AI kills an industry - Journalism

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Too bad AI wasn't around to do it before journalism killed America.

LOYAL AG said:

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sanangelo said:

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LOYAL AG said:

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sanangelo said:

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I'm gonna avoid this thread.

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You shouldn't. You're a journalist so your opinion matters in a way mine doesn't. It's undeniable that the corporate media has ruined its own reputation with dishonesty and political bias. Left or right is secondary to the fact that they aren't trustworthy.

Can you admit that? If so what's the solution? You avoiding the topic doesn't make it go away.

---

The core problem is finding sustainable revenue models for local and independent journalism.

In both sports and political media, "parachute journalism" rules: The New York Times (usually with a leftward slant) breaks a story, and everyone else just rewrites it. In Texas sports media, one negative Matt Stepp tweet about Aggie football can get parroted across the entire industry.

Google and Facebook have vacuumed up nearly all the digital ad revenue, leaving everyone else fighting over scraps. That's why most outlets struggle to do anything truly creative or in-depth.

Ben Shapiro's Daily Wire has done an excellent job building a loyal audience, but even they get hit hard Apple takes about a third of their programmatic podcast ad revenue, and Roku takes another third. That's a big reason why serious independent outlets are moving toward monthly subscription models instead of relying on ads.

The Dallas Morning News basically turned their ad sales team into a general ad agency. A few years ago, their biggest client was a car dealership in Indianapolis. At that point, ad revenue is completely divorced from the actual publication and its readership.

There are some upsides to programmatic ads. I make 10-15% of my monthly revenue from them, which gives me the freedom to keep the platform accessible to everyone and not be beholden to a single big local advertiser. It also lets me break controversial stories without fear.

The downside is that there still simply isn't enough money in the current model to support a full-scale investigative journalism operation here in San Angelo.

---

Appreciate that detailed response about the current economics of journalism. That's honestly why I wanted you to respond as I think you're the only "traditional" journalist on this forum. Your take matters here. The revenue discussion is interesting but to me your biggest threat is X. Its always in and someone is always there to break the story. That's impossible for you to compete with. And it's free. I have no clue how to monetize an X account but to me thats where news needs to be monetized. Good luck. Rough industry right now and that's probably not changing.

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His commentary goes back to my point above about substack. That's where actual investigative journalism lives now (one platform example), but I'm not ready to pay for it. The other issue is that it's long form journalism which most people simply won't take the time to read. And it's just too easy to crowd source news for free now despite the inherent error rate with it like you said about X. But I think people have gotten so fed up by the betrayal and bias of the MSM that they are fine with that.

I still have a WSJ sub which I pay around $10 for because it's my easy button to source news and it's about the only MSM source left that hasn't fully capitulated to left wing nonsense. It's not perfect but it's better than everything else in the MSM.

stetson said:

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Quote:

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it seems to me that in killing off news reporting, we are forced to rely on more unoriginal AI slop to replace it.

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They're not journalists, they are political activists. Let them learn to code. Oh, wait, learn to plumb…

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you'd trust them with your toilet? ....not me

Much of what you've observed is spot on. That said, in local media, X (Twitter) isn't much of a player. The X audience is tiny compared to Facebook and Google News.

Here in San Angelo (Tom Green County population ~120k), there are roughly 80k Facebook accounts, with about 25k active users. Instagram has fewer than 10k active accounts. X probably has fewer than 5,000. I sell against and into all of these platforms daily. My own site draws 80k active users from inside the 5-county San Angelo DMA. About 50% of that traffic comes from Facebook alone. Another 30% is direct (URL entry or our app, which has 14k installs). The rest comes from search and 13 years of referral links built across thousands of other websites.

The man who taught me the strategy for building a successful local media platform was an old radio guy in Del Rio named Larry Mariner (KDLK FM). He always stressed that ad sales require a true "mass appeal" audience. You have to create content that virtually everyone in the market has to see or hear about. In my case, that means breaking news. When there are 10 cop cars at the end of the street, people want to know why right now. You'll see the same approach on Chron.com and MySA.com. Hearst were masters of this in Houston and San Antonio.

X works well for political and sports content with fragmented, regional-to-international audiences. It doesn't lend itself as well to concentrated, mass-appeal local coverage. To make real money on X you need around 100k followers, and even then the payouts are still pretty low basically sharecropping. One big issue today is that everyone is clearly playing to the algorithm. A lot of the promoted content (especially on topics like the Iran situation) feels ominous and artificial. Another problem is you often don't know who is really behind the account. Many use unserious or silly usernames. I had an interaction this week with someone named "Tulip King." It's hard to take anything like that seriously.

Thank you for the commentary on name choices San Angelo LIVE. next time I want critical analysis on the future of warfare I will look forward to your opinions

— Tulip King 🌷 (@tulipking) April 4, 2026

If you want to reach the local audience including the "baby mamas" and everyday folks you have to leverage Facebook.

I tried (and eventually aborted) building a similar news site in Lubbock. My biggest hurdle was growing a sizable mass-appeal Facebook audience. It's much harder now than it was from 2010-2015. The Facebook algorithm is full of trap doors and exceptions that are tough to navigate. My mass-appeal strategy needed strong confirmation bias from a large number of followers, but that wasn't going to happen without spending a fortune on ads. I did manage to break one huge story that got read by millions before I shut it down and X (with only 413 views on the post) was not what made it go viral. Facebook was.

Inside the underworld of #Lubbock at the steamy "Sex Castle." https://t.co/2n7nyDNpKw

— southplainslive (@southplainslive) October 2, 2024

t.u. Lipking is obviously a sip.

That's great insight into not where local journalism is and potentially headed. Thank you.

I believe all of your posting on this thread was just a long game to get me to read an article about McMansion tier swingers.

And it worked.

In unrelated news, we are moving to Lubbock.