About the last thing anyone wants to remember from this most recent election is that the Google search “did joe biden drop out” spiked on Election Day. Not good for the people who believe in an informed electorate being vital to democracy.
I think it’s time we start looking at this a little closer, with a lot less ego and a lot more effort.
The very basic assumptions we use to make journalism are breaking down. Like the very idea that people want to be informed. And that they way we inform them works for most people. Because it’s clear it does not. And they don’t.
My prediction for 2025? Maybe, just maybe, we’ll put everything on the table. And I mean everything.
Like how we write and who we write for. Like what we write about. Like the very assumption that people can even read our stuff.
Gallup in 2022 found that half of Americans aged 16 to 74 had low literacy skills. Most people read at an eighth-grade level. Billions of words (it feels like) have been spilled dissecting why news organizations are in the state they’re in. (Radio! Television! Cable! Corporate ownership! The internet! Craigslist! Google! Facebook! TikTok!) Meanwhile, 130 million people struggle to read stories written by people who either went to grad school or have thought about it far more than people who read at the eighth-grade level.
If journalism is going to live up to its lofty billing as being essential to an informed democracy, it has to stop thinking that anything is above replacement.
Start with the story as the atomic unit of measure. Oooh, we love to write 800-1,000 words about drama in some legislative hearing. But who are we writing that for? Does a working person just trying to get by need that? The answer is…maybe. But maybe they don’t need 1,000 words. Maybe they need something else.
What about a product that uses AI to create two other versions of that story in addition to the one the human writes? That human version is the full version — all the nuance and drama and detail a highly educated reader who cares about the subject could want from a highly-educated reporter with a fancy college degree. The AI takes that and creates two more versions. The first version? For the reader who says “I barely care or have limited understanding, so give me a couple of sentences written at the eighth-grade level.” The second version? “I’m curious, but just curious, so give me a half-dozen sentences and maybe I’ll read the rest and maybe I won’t.” The reporter gives them a good working over, as does an editor, and boom: Three levels of story. Let the reader decide what they want or need now.
I’m fascinated with how the writer’s ego would react to 85 percent of people reading the really short version. How many capital-W Writers will be happy when the analytics say no more than 15 percent read the long version. But what’s the point of the exercise here? Is it to inform people, or to show off what we know and how sophisticated we sound? Can journalism find a way to be happy if people are measurably more informed, even if it’s only a couple of sentences more informed? Is there joy in the aggregate?
Next, can this be the year we try focusing ruthlessly on what people need instead of a term paper’s worth of sources talking about What This Means?
For example, our Average Person doesn’t need the 1,000 words of drama from the planning and zoning commission, but they do need help with their bank account. Everything is expensive. People need to know how to save a buck or two. They don’t need an economist from Moody’s to tell them about inverted yield curves or the consensus opinion of what the Fed will do next. Remember: There are 130 million people who probably have no clue who or what the Fed is.
Where are the news products that are laser focused on this basic idea? We used to joke, in the way that honest people confront things they don’t want admit, that most people got the newspaper for the coupons. The world has moved on from clipping coupons, but isn’t the diss-the-rubes joke among the terminally online that people voted for cheaper eggs? Where is the Wirecutter, but for groceries in my town?
You give me a product where I give you my grocery list and you tell me to get these things at Hy-Vee, these at Super Saver and these at Trader Joe’s and I’ll save $15 even after factoring in the gas to drive there and I’ll gladly pay the monthly subscription. You’ll make loyal subscribers with a big number at the top that says “Your $20 subscription has saved you $90 this month.”
If this sounds like those early-2000s sticky notes on the front of the Sunday newspaper saying there’s $159 in coupons inside, it should! People paid money for news because of that sticky note. Rub some modern tech on it, make it ruthlessly local, and I bet you they’ll do it again.
Matt Waite is a professor of practice in journalism in the College of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Nebraska.
