Should elite journalists even use AI? + Why the first casualty of AI is clarity + Albo’s Oxymoron

Hi

There is no doubt that AI has shifted us from an attention economy to a trust economy.

Not only has AI increased noise, but when audiences suspect AI has been used to create communication, trust crashes 50%.

It’s no longer enough to get attention; you also need to maintain authority.

In this edition, I look at the danger that AI commoditises elite services and destroys clarity – the foundation of credibility and authority – and how to prevent that from happening to your communication and brand.

Ben

Strategy

AI undermines the status of elite journalists, and what that means for modern thought leaders

There has been a lot of debate around journalists using AI. Blogger and journalist Matthew Yglesias has argued that journalists should use it more.

Nine, owner of the The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Australian Financial Review, is reportedly encouraging its journalists to ramp up their use of AI to “improve efficiency”.

But that could backfire.

I’m agnostic about AI. I do think most business is about efficiency, and AI (perhaps) could be useful. But not all businesses are about efficiency.

Many deliver enormous value from insight, emotion ... and even status.

One of the world's most valuable companies, LVMH, is built on positional goods – goods and services that few can afford, giving them high social status.

As AI saturates the world, human-generated journalism has the potential to become a positional, status product.

This is already happening. Titles like The AFR and Financial Times have thrived despite the internet because they provide valuable information … but also because they are elite and signal status.

The AFR’s most recent campaign slogan is ‘it’s not for everyone’.

Rampant use of AI puts that positioning at risk.

It risks turning elite journalism into a commodity. After all, a reader can cut out the prompting journalist and prompt AI themselves. And any competitor can produce AI-generated journalism.

(I’m primarily talking about overuse of AI, not for background research, but for finding news at the expense of human-focused and ‘gumshoe’ reporting, and for writing, particularly crafted features.)

Why is this important?

Well, the same dynamic will play out in the broader communications sphere.

Because it will be rare, human-generated and edited content and thought leadership will, like elite journalism, become a positional good.

Most organisations can only afford to create AI-generated content. Few will have the resources, or the skills, to produce great human-generated content.

In an AI-world, therefore, high-quality, human-created thought leadership delivers a clear market signal – we are special, we are valuable, we are credible, we are elite.

Editing

The ‘research trap’: How to prevent AI ruining your communications clarity

When ChatGPT came along, I thought communicators would need to respond by adding more humanity. AI, after all, would do the whole ‘clear’ communication thing easily.

I was totally wrong.

The first casualty of AI has been the foundation of all good communication – clarity.

Lack of clarity kills authority and trust, just when trust is at a premium.

Throat clearing

Problems with clarity begin when we finish researching and sit down to draft our speech, article, op-ed or white paper.  

Our first instinct is to start with a dump of everything we found in our research: the history of the topic, the broader context, definitions, etc.

I call this instinct the ‘research trap’.

The result is what editors call ‘throat clearing’ – the boring preamble before a writer gets to a point – and journalists call ‘burying the lead’.

As you can see in the diagram below, the research trap causes the most useless information to land in the most visible position (at the start); while the value-added material, the insights, is submerged and hidden at the end.

This, of course, has always been a problem.

But I’ve noticed that, because of the sheer volume of information now easily available from AI research, the problem is getting worse.

Righting the iceberg

Fortunately, there is a solution, which I call ‘righting the iceberg’.

Basically, as you can see below, you flip the original iceberg over.

You get rid of, or trim back, that meaningless background research material.

Instead, you get to your main point and insights as quickly as possible.

Several simple techniques can help you ‘right the iceberg’:

1. Introduce a planning phase

After your research, do some basic thinking, planning and outlining. The simplest structure is a main point and 3-5 supporting points.

2. Stop telling readers what they already know

Briefly summarise what your readers already know and believe at the start, then launch straight into your opinion and insights. (Don’t outline the causes of inflation; get straight to the market and investment implications.)

3.  Ask big questions

When you’ve got research material, ask:

· So what? Why is this important?

· What does this really mean?

· What is my main point or argument?

4. Edit with precision

Sometimes we just need to get everything down on paper first. But then cut it back, particularly the first third.

The ‘fish-head’ theory of editing says that when you clean a fish, the first thing that goes is the head. It’s the same with manuscripts – cut the head off.

Technique

Albanese’s ‘Progressive Patriotism’ shows we should be open to oxymorons

One Nation is seen as a big problem for the Coalition, but Labor has been smart enough to respond to the threat, too.

One result has been a subtle repositioning of the Party, with Anthony Albanese adopting the interesting slogan, Progressive Patriotism.

Progressive Patriotism is, of course, a political oxymoron. It brings together two seemingly contradictory values.

Oxymorons have a bad name. It suggests a lack of conviction, a hedging of bets, and that certainly is a risk.

But they also have a long history in politics: George Bush’s “Compassionate Conservative”; David Cameron’s “Muscular liberalism”; Reagan’s “peace through strength” …

And oxymorons are very powerful because, by adding the contradiction, they disarm criticism of your core value: that conservatives are too harsh; liberals are weak; strong leaders are war mongers, etc.

And that’s what Progressive Patriotism does for Labor. It counters the view, particularly among One Nation voters, that Progressives are somehow not patriotic. “That can’t be true,” Labor can now say, “because we’re Progressive Patriots!” It achieves that, but it also allows Labor to keep its core value of being progressive.

The lesson is that in a complex world, we shouldn’t be fearful of oxymorons. They can be powerful, uniting, disarming and creative.