Notes

These are definitely fracturing times. Humanity is prone to hyperbole, but there seems to be a consensus that recent times are <all caps>NOT NORMAL</all caps> and the world is losing its collective mind.

Kanye West has somehow come to the judgment that George W. Bush was not deserving of our trust and patience, but Donald Trump is.

The engineers of much of the right-wing progress (regress?) are now openly resisting the Republican governmental bodies.

The fervor on the left is leading previously united parties to turn on each other for not being zealous enough towards the disintegration of said government, regardless of legality or appropriateness. It’s also leading them to blindly follow some obvious snake oil salespeople.

I have no doubt that everything going on now makes things more challenging, but I have two hard and fast rules that I am doing my best to follow.

The functioning democracy in which we live must remain so. Change happens so (or may not happen at all) and we have to do our damnedest to effect in the correct way. Anything else is an abrogation of the very reason why we’re so passionate about what a just society requires.

And – the purpose of the title: I don’t care if people with odious politics are currently found on the same side as me aligned against some currently common obstacle or foe. If their politics are odious, they remain a net-negative on the body politic. They will not get my congratulations and they will be excused.

Reading this Q&A with the CEO of Der Spiegel is a very interesting case of the glass half-empty/half-full problem. A charitable reading could find a company that is comfortable with experimentation and with a lot of different avenues in which they could devote their resources.

But a less charitable view, and I think the correct one, is that the main revenue source (advertising) is continuing to decline and none of the alternative avenues (Snapchat? Facebook? Subscriber model) seem like they can carry the freight. It seems like 2018 needs to not be the year of experimentation, but that of refocusing.

Source: Spiegel Online CEO Jesper Doub on the pivot to consumer revenue, the duopoly and privacy regulations – Digiday

Before I hit send on this piece, I passed the words on your screen through a program called Grammarly. While it is not a foolproof editor, its algorithm will likely catch grammatical issues immediately that would take me multiple times to spot (if at all). It will also confirm to me that I haven’t stolen the below copy from another writer through its plagiarism engine. It’s just one piece of technology that helped bring this article to life.

There will not be any spelling errors because a little underline appears when I try to do that, alerting me to a missing or extraneous letter or a futile attempt at spelling out a florid* word.

* I previously used the word fancy, but a trip to Thesaurus.com led me to change it to florid.

My SEO plugin has made multiple suggestions on word usage to make sure this article reaches as wide an audience as possible. I used a headline optimizer to come up with the best way to draw you in.

There are countless ways that technology improves upon the written word. Some have been around for so long that we barely appreciate them anymore.

But because it often assists us in the background, we tend to treat mentions of technology as career destroyers, not job enhancers. Especially when we’re discussing bots capable of writing the very stories we write today.

As a reader, you have likely read a bot-written article in a newspaper powered by technology like Heliograf, Narrative Sciences, or others.

If you are a writer, this may potentially keep you up at night. You fear the bots are coming to take your job. And, it’s true, bots might replace a lot of editorial employees. But, if you’ll read on, allow me to propose a more optimistic result of the bot revolution.

//

CODA

Last night, I watched the Pittsburgh Steelers play the Cincinnati Bengals on Monday Night Football. If I hadn’t and wanted to know what happened, I could look at any number of recaps filed last night and this morning. While each story undoubtedly has its unique take on the night, the reality is that all of those stories present a collection of data points.

The key themes of the football game:

Who Won: Pittsburgh, who are still in 2nd place in the conference and lead their division.

How They Won: Comeback – they were down 17 points.

Who They Beat: Cincinnati, who now has a 1% chance to make the playoffs.  This is the sixth straight time they’ve lost to the Steelers. Pittsburgh is 62-35 all-time against Cincinnati.

Key Stats: LeVon Bell gained 182 yards from scrimmage and a TD, A.J. Green had 77 yards and 2 TDs, and Antonio Brown had 101 yards and a TD.

Miscellaneous: Multiple players exited the game and did not return. However, one person, Ryan Shazier exited with a traumatic back injury – where he was not immediately able to move his legs, stoking fears of paralysis (he appears to have been very lucky, but still TBD)

#Steelers LB Ryan Shazier has shown promising signs this morning. I’m told he has some movement in his lower extremities after last night’s back injury, but the next 24-48 hours are key for increased improvement.

— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) December 5, 2017

These are all distinct, data points that a bot can easily access. Currently, that bot is going to do some things better than a human (access deep, nonobvious trends and stats that a human might not detect or be able to find) and things worse (describe the horror on the field when Shazier went down). A bot might also get tripped up by some confusing narratives (Pittsburgh won yesterday despite having significantly underperformed Cincinnati in 3rd down conversions, which usually implies overall success) Or does it? The point is it would take me a significant amount of time to try that theory out, whereas a bot can have that info on hand.

Point being, bots are ready to take on a lot of sports coverage. And can probably outperform human writers in educating readers on some story templates. This is why the Washington Post is farming out local area sports coverage to bots. And the technologies are only going to get better.

But all is not lost. The ideal template for at least the next couple of years is a writer/editor relationship between bot and human. The bot writes the first draft and the human edits the final draft off of that template (adding color, moving around grafs, removing the less important info). If you think about bots are editorial assistants as opposed to replacement, it seems more empowering and less frightening.

It will also likely free up editorial bandwidth to pursue the narrative stories that bots are much further away from solving.

Such as: what drove Ryan Shazier and others to continue playing football despite the dangers.

The future is uncertain and frightening, but we should keep a grounded perspective. If you think of a bot not as your competition, but as one of those person assistant robots made famous by science fiction movies, it becomes less scary. But maybe don’t think about HAL-9000.

It is brutal out there for those working in editorial. From pivots to video and extensive layoffs, job security is an illusion. While that is depressing and many people will find no solace in this, journalists and editors are an in-demand workforce. This is because content is now among the most valuable marketing tools for any company.

I do sincerely hope that journalism thrives and those out of work find (or start) the next great journalistic enterprise. But for those that don’t, a new career awaits.

And for companies looking to bolster their marketing departments, here are a couple of reasons why you should look to journalists for their next job opening.

1. Content is the lifeblood of a modern marketing organization. The average consumer’s attention is spread out over an almost incalculable amount of sources. And they have particular needs without having a high criterion of how someone meets those needs. They may want to be entertained… or informed… or shocked… or brought to tears. While it’s not always easy for a brand to do that, it’s not impossible.
2. They bring a new mentality. It’s not shocking to point out that brands can sometimes get into trouble and obfuscate their way out of it. They usually get figured out and, as we learned from Watergate, the coverup is worse than the crime. Journalists can imbue within the organization a sense that the truth is advisable and can be used to one’s advantage.
3. They don’t bullshit. Companies can often get lost in and in love with the mythos of their brand. Storytelling gets lost. A journalist cannot repeatedly mail in a story and keep his or her job. He or she can tell you when your brand is not resonating and likely why.
4. They are sponges. Journalists are curious by nature. If you want someone who is going to be determined to learn every day, you often cannot find a better fit than a person who has taught his or herself how to understand entirely new industries just through research and dedication.
5. The job’s the thing. While the traditional path of promotion for writers is to become an editor, not all (in fact many) do not want to be editors. Managing career paths is a challenge for all industries, but it’s especially prevalent in media. Some just want to grow their stature as a writer and obviously make more money. In a marketing department beset with ego and title hawking, you can have a dedicated worker who just wants to do good work and be paid fairly without needing to manage people or have the loftiest title.

Of course, there are exceptions to this rule, but you’ll find a lot of journalists embody the above. It’s definitely a buyers market for editorial talent, but don’t take it for granted. Smarter companies have been hiring journalists for a long time. If you haven’t started, now is the time.