Pressing Matters
Pressing Matters
Third Anniversary Episode: Michael Nuñez, Editor Director, VentureBeat & Fred Vogelstein, Co-Editor and Co-Founder, CrazyStupidTech
We all know the internet has significantly impacted media's business model over the past three decades, and the conventional wisdom is that AI will do the same. Many believe it will replace reporters, lead to computer-generated news stories, increase misinformation, produce more fake news, and generally make a struggling industry even worse. But what if the opposite is true? What if AI can free up reporters' time to do the kind of deep reporting they used to do? What if AI can lead to more, not less, human creativity in journalism and beyond? What if AI tools could be used to reduce bias and filter out untrustworthy sources? What if AI actually is the technology that saves journalism?
Okay, I might be pushing it with that last point. But these other questions are definitely worth discussing. In fact, we had that very discussion with Fred Vogelstein of CrazyStupidTech and Michael Nuñez of VentureBeat for this special third-anniversary episode of Pressing Matters from Big Valley Marketing—the podcast that features conversations with top media figures and influencers in B2B Tech.
I'm Dave Reddy, Head of Big Valley Marketing's Media and Influencers Practice, and your host. Through research and good old-fashioned relationship building, we've identified B2B Tech's Top 200 Media and Influencers, including Michael and Fred. Here's our conversation with Michael and Fred. Enjoy.
We all know the internet has done a number on media's business model in the past three decades. And the conventional wisdom is that AI will do the same. It'll replace reporters, lead to computer-generated news stories, more misinformation, more fake news, and generally make a struggling industry even worse. But what if the opposite is true? What if AI can open up reporters' time to do the kind of deep reporting they used to do? What if AI can lead to more, not less, human magic in journalism and in general? What if AI tools can be used to decrease bias and winnow out untrustworthy sources? What if AI actually is the technology that saves journalism? Okay, I'm pushing it on that last one. But the other questions, they're worth discussing. And in fact, I had that discussion with Fred Vogelstein of Crazy Stupid Tech and Michael Nunez of VentureBeat for this special third anniversary episode of Pressing Matters from Big Valley Marketing, the podcast that brings you conversations with the top media and influencers in B2B tech. I'm Dave Reddy, head of Big Valley Marketing's media and influencers practice, and I'm your host. Through research and good old-fashioned relationship building, we We've identified B2B Tech's top 200 media and influencers, including Michael and Fred. Here's our chat with Michael and Fred. Enjoy. Fred, Michael, thanks so much for coming back to join us for our third anniversary. It's amazing. It's been three years and really appreciate the two of you rejoining us for this special episode. G
Michael Nuñez:Great to be here. Thanks for having us.
Dave Reddy:So we're looking at human magic. Will AI destroy it, both in terms of journalism and just generally? The reason I asked both of you to come back is you both have really distinct viewpoints about AI. You're both using AI. You've both been inventive with AI in your different ways. And I'm just curious, that fundamental question, is AI ever going to destroy the human magic? And Michael, start with you. What do you think?
Michael Nuñez:Yeah, I think it's a great starting point. You know, the reality is that AI will not destroy the human magic. I think it will only enhance, you know, kind of what makes journalists great, you know, great humans and great, you know, kind of empaths. conducting interviews, building sources, finding the story behind the facts, you know, providing that critical analysis that readers crave. I think those are things that you'll still need a sharp kind of embedded reporter to do. But I do think AI is undoubtedly going to have an impact on the, and a huge impact on the entire industry. You know, I think that two years ago, or, you know, when ChatGPT launched in November of 2022, You know, there was a lot of debate around whether AI belonged in journalism. I think that debate is over. I think that, you know, AI is absolutely going to impact journalism. It already has started. And I see this as something, you know, it's less of a tool like a tape recorder and a CMS. And I think AI is more of a foundational shift, like the printing press or the internet, something that we just can't ignore. You know, I've said in the past, I think this will be bigger than Google. in terms of its impact on each individual reporter. And right now, we're seeing newsrooms wrestle with how to integrate this technology into their newsroom. But I would argue that most places at this point aren't ignoring AI. It's just too big of an opportunity to ignore. And I think the best journalists are the ones that are integrating this into their workflow and letting the AI take over the drudgery of transcription And, you know, reading a 100 page report, you know, on a specific industry or going through a two hour interview to find good quotes. I think, you know, they're employing AI in some of those instances to just speed up their work process. And, you know, in the best case scenario, they're producing more high quality work at a faster clip. So, you know, that's definitely what we see at VentureMeet. And that's something that we really pride ourselves on in terms of just sort of trying to lead the pack in terms of this. embrace of AI.
Dave Reddy:I like your reference to Google because, you know, Google certainly has not taken away the AI magic and it's become, you know, an essential tool. Can you imagine, and I can, but can you imagine life without Google? That was a long time ago, thank God. Fred, what's your thought? Is human magic an endangered species?
Fred Vogelstein:No, not at all. I mean, I actually, I don't want to agree with Michael too much because we need time for me to call him an ignorant slut, but...
Dave Reddy:I didn't
Michael Nuñez:realize there were no rules on this podcast. Okay. But
Fred Vogelstein:no, no, no. But I think that it makes, I use it, I use it all the time and it makes me smarter. And, you know, it makes the front of my brain bigger. It makes my ability to see story ideas happen faster to put those stories together quicker to just be what I am quicker, faster, better in a way that I just don't think is going away. I mean, I've almost completely stopped using Google. Really? Yeah. I mean, it's like Google and even the founders of Google will tell you this in their private moments. I mean, 20 years years ago, the founders of Google talked about what they were creating as kind of an intermediate step to where we are now. You know, they thought that search was an intermediate step on the way to an answer machine. Well, that's what we have now. I mean, there's some irony lurking in the fact that Google is playing catch up there since they were thinking about this before anybody else was. But, you know, search is an intermediate step on the way to an answer machine. And that's the way I use ChatGPT and all the other chatbots out there. And they do a really, really good job of it. I mean, it's a little bit like having something create bespoke Wikipedia pages for you. If I have a question about anything, whether or not it's related to work or whether or not it's just related to my life, I pull up ChatGBT, I ask it, and I get an answer. I understand that that answer isn't going to be always perfect, and I certainly understand that, like, if I was going to use that information in a published story, I would need to kind of go back and check it. But again, just like a Wikipedia page is a great place to kind of start a reporting project because you can look at the bottom and look at all the footnotes that are there and then that tells you all the articles that you can read to kind of bone up on the particular topic, which then gives you a whole list of people to kind of reach out to. That's what ChatGPT does for me in what I do every day. I mean, you know, so I use it. I use Notebook LM to transcribe, to kind of digest and transcribe interview notes. I use something called Alice.ai, which is an AI transcription tool designed for journalists that I like because it's designed for journalists. But the basic point is, and I don't know whether or not we're there yet, but I think I could probably do this if I took the time. What we're really all after is creating the LLM of us so what I really want and what I think every journalist would want and what I think every newsroom could at some point supply them is the LLM of them is like I would love to be able to take all my emails all my interview notes all my story drafts all my various musings and upload them into some... some AI platform and have it essentially train just on everything I've done over the course of the past 30 years. Then it might actually like help me remember story ideas and things that I thought of that I'd long forgotten. So
Dave Reddy:That's how you're using it too. And so you've anticipated my next question. Thank you. So Michael, you know, we had a chance to see each other at your Transform event, which was fantastic. I heard a lot of things about AI from both AI folks and from reporters. You guys are at the vanguard, I think, of AI. You could probably spend 45 minutes telling me how you're using it, but in a nutshell, how do you folks use it at VentureBeat and how do you use it personally?
Michael Nuñez:Well, I think an important thing to kind of add here is that we just, I think at the most basic level, we don't see this as a replacement tool. This is not, I think the question around will AI replace people is kind of the wrong framing. It's often the question that gets asked because that's where people's fear is most apparent, I guess. People are worried about their jobs, about the uncertainty of the economy, I guess, right now. And so there's all this fear that AI is just going to gain super intelligence and take a bunch of people's jobs. But I think AI will not replace journalists. It's just replacing the tasks. that were mistakenly believed to define journalism. So, you know, the drudgery of transcribing the, you know, summarizing 200 page court documents, you know, even, you know, these, I think it will also get rid of this sort of press release rewrites, you know, that that you see kind of polluting the internet. So, you know, the part that's really important is that you still need really good judgment for all this stuff. So AI is great at kind of accelerating your workflow, but you know, it doesn't build relationships of trust with a source that's kind of risking their career to expose wrongdoing. It doesn't have taste. It doesn't have unique perspective. So those are the things that I think editors still and reporters still need to employ kind of when they're embracing this stuff. And, you know, AI won't replace great journalists, but I think journalists that are using AI will replace those that are not using AI. So I see this very similar to the social media boom. You discouraged from embracing social media and blogging was kind of this dirty word when I graduated in 2009. And they would tell us often at the University of Missouri Journalism School that we were reporters, we weren't bloggers. Well, by the time I entered the journalism industry in 2009, blogging was like the best job you could probably have. And it was because those people had no attachment to the traditions of the industry. They were inserting themselves into the story. The articles were filled with perspective. You know, it was kind of the new journalism of our era, you know, like the Norman Mailer and Tom Wolfe and, you know, some of the guys from the 60s, Hunter S. Thompson, you know, those guys all broke the rules back then and were kind of adding themselves to the story. And they were characters in many of their best stories. And I think you saw something very similar during the social media boom. I think with AI, you know, I don't know that people will be inserting themselves into the stories, but I think those that are kind of running toward this technology are going to have a leg up over those that don't. And in terms of just the guidance that we provide for our writers, I think that I kind of see this as us moving from basically being producers to being directors. I think that the best people that are using these tools are kind of directing these different AI tools to do different tasks for them in their workflow. And again, I think it frees up the journalist to do what only a journalist can do, which is conducting a great interview, building sources, finding that story that's behind the facts. I think AI is great at discovering facts, but I think to tell a great story, you still need that human perspective, that critical analysis that readers crave. So yeah, hopefully that answers your question. But I think for us, we're not trying to automate the news. I think that's something that a lot of people get wrong. And we're also not trying to replace writers with AI. We're trying to find really good writers that are using these new tools to move faster and to write better stories.
Fred Vogelstein:one of the bigger journalism in Silicon Valley by 2015. You know, I think they're definitely connected. Obviously, Michael Arrington was a blogger who created TechCrunch. The activity is very, very similar. And to kind of draw a distinction is, I think... I think silly. I think the basic, I think the basic point is, you know, what's important is to, I sometimes, I've started thinking about journalism in a bottoms up rather than a top down kind of way. You know, what's important for readers? What's important for readers is to get information that is credible, trustworthy, and useful to them. Where writer and editors are are completely transparent about their biases and their conflicts of interest. After that, as long as you're completely transparent about what you're doing and why you're doing it, I'm not sure I understand what the difference is between that and what the New York Times does, other than the ultimate budget, other than their... sort of ability to get people to call them back and therefore the impact of the stories that they have. You know, I think that everything else, all the various rules and frameworks and things that... end up signing, you know, documents that we end up signing when we join news organizations, whether or not it's the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, like, you can't own stocks, like, you know, you must not, like, take, you must not get gifts, you know, blah, blah, blah. I mean, all of those aren't necessarily rules for the sake of rules. They're just simply rules to protect the brand that you are working for, which, you know, is valuable for a simple reason that like lots and lots and lots of time and energy have gone into kind of making it credible. But if you have your own brand and people trust it, and you can use whatever rules your readers are prepared to tolerate, and if you can figure out a way to make money doing that, more power to you. I think that's the beauty of like what's going on right now. I mean, the thing that was difficult about blog was that, you know, in the early days, you know, you both had to sell advertising and then had to actually create content. And I think that created sort of a structure that was just back-breaking for a lot of the early bloggers who turned businesses into, turned their blogs into businesses. But the thing that's great about what's going on now and the subscription model that exists today and the various, like, new ways of kind of getting stuff distributed is that there's actually now a direct link between the quality of your content and the number of subscriptions that you have. And so in a weird way, I mean, I sometimes talk about Substack and now all the other companies and whatnot, they're launching with a better business model. And so, you know.
Michael Nuñez:But this stuff is, this is all really apparent now. I think when you, you know, if you can think back to 2009, like, this was the beginning of kind of the golden era of blogging, which we can now see because we're on the downswing, you know, but I think when this stuff was first coming out, you know, I think, you know, and right now I see it with AI as well. Like academic institutions are really struggling because, you know, I think a lot of professors are experts in a world that is kind of quickly vanishing. And so their expertise, their tenure, their entire careers were built on this set of skills that are quickly becoming augmented or automated. And at least with the social media boom before it, I think we're now living in this post-truth world, right? Or basically the misinformation age. So I think seeing news with bias and with opinion and with personality is... basically the status quo at this point. You know, the biggest news distribution platform personalities are like Joe Rogan and, you know, comedians and podcasters. And, you know, people get their news from Instagram and TikTok and just random people on the internet. That wasn't always the case. You know, this was still, I think we were still kind of in the monoculture era where there was this expectation that the New York Times was unbiased. The Wall Street Journal was, you know, these institutions were perceived as unbiased and so the reporters were expected to write or like the way that the institutions were teaching it like the J schools were that you know saying that you had to be sort of this voice of God, fly on the wall and represent the facts without opinion and without bringing any of your own personal biases to that process. I think now there's been, even within those really strict institutions like the New York Times and the Journal and et cetera, I think they've loosened some of those rules. Now, you would never find the word I in a story prior, in the early 2000s, it'd really hard to find. You know, I went to this event and I did X, Y, Z. Now you can see that on the New York Times every day, basically. I think that there are examples. Maybe it's not super prominent, but I think they're more open to that style of reporting where it's, you know, first person and someone's setting the scene, you know, in an event that they're at or whatever. And frankly, they're just promoting their personalities a lot more than they used to. I think, you know, now you just see that across the board and it's part of the culture. Like you said, Substack has become kind of has become kind of this de facto platform for writers that are either unhappy at their existing workplace or want more freedom or just want to own the the the entire process but um but i think it's hard to see past the fog i guess when you're in it and you know, I think professors, you know, I hear about this in different industries. So it's not just journalism, I think in law and in healthcare and in finance. And, you know, there are many industries where people are worried about like, what they're supposed to be teaching college students right now, because you don't want to entirely avoid the technology like we're talking about, you know, I think that would be a disservice to the student. But at the same time, you don't want to teach bad habits, right? You know, so I think there is still value in the traditions of journalism in the traditions of law and some of those you know the things that you have junior associates do that drudgery helps shape I think some of these young writers and lawyers and and financiers or whatever and so and bankers I guess and so you know like I'm a better journalist because I wrote obituaries for you know many of the early days in my career and I've I learned to write features. Nowadays, I just don't think students are, they don't, I don't know that that's the process that they're, that they're going through. And I think that's okay, too, because, you know, I've, I've witnessed a lot of change, you know, when I graduated, there was sort of this expectation that there would be some mentorship that the people at these kind of larger institutions would take care of and nurture and sort of mentor the younger journalists who, you know, start on the lowest rung, but then eventually become so senior reporters, and then senior editors and kind of climb the masthead. I think, you know, basically from the 2010s and on, you had an environment where journalists are really just like, many of them are just trying to survive and basically just find the high ground as the floor falls out from beneath them. And so we're all switching jobs every couple of years. And even people with really good jobs, you know, you can be the editor in chief of Wired Magazine, and you're still switching your job one or two years later. And, you know, it's, it's It's just, we just live in such a, there's just been so much change, I think, in media in particular and news media in particular that I actually think we're best equipped to handle this transition to AI because many of us have already lived through some pretty big shifts in the marketplace. And I think when I look at other industries, when I listen to people in other industries, it's kind of funny to me because it's the same types of conversations that people were having around social media. And, you know, I was 20 years old at the time and I I just didn't have the perspective to know that, you know, it was okay to kind of follow my instincts on some of this stuff. And it was okay to, to just disregard, frankly, what, what a little bit of what I was being taught in school and, or at least challenge that more, more openly. And I think now that I see, you know, this, this AI wave coming or, or basically, you know, the fact that that's here already, it just feels like, you know, like the tsunami is coming and you can't, Yeah, absolutely. It's more like use your mastery of the English language and your clarity of thought to leverage this tool to make your writing better. You should arrive at VentureBeat with good ideas and good instincts and good intuition on what makes a good headline, what makes a good lead, what makes a good nut graph. The AI can make that even better and can help you move even faster if you're really good at it. So that's kind of my view on sort of how we with this new technology and how we try our best to embrace it in our newsroom.
Dave Reddy:So here's a crazy question. Let's turn the question that I originally had asked on its head. Journalism, as Michael said, we all know this, struggling big time, the money, the monetization has changed largely because of technology. Is it possible that the proper use of AI, and I think not to put words in your mouth, Michael, but I think this is part of what you were trying to get across, Is it possible that the proper use of AI as an augmentation to journalism could actually be part of, if not the solution, to journalism's people problem right now? Fred. What do you mean by people problem? The notion that there just aren't as many people out there, that they can't afford to have the big giant masthead that they used to. So can AI be the augmenter? Can it be the researcher? Can it be the news aid, if you will?
Fred Vogelstein:Sure. I mean, I think that what I think is is going to happen is... I mean, if you start from the premise that AI makes you smarter, and if you start from the premise that you now live in a world where... If you have something to say, it's easier to build an audience around what you're writing and generate income around that than ever before. If you take those two things and put them together, that essentially says that independent media, that essentially is like throwing gasoline on the independent media revolution. You're essentially saying to... journalists not just me who has been doing it a long time but young journalists you know go work for go work for like a big place for a little bit develop some contacts and some and some skills and then like after you've done it at like a big place for you know and a big place by I mean just any place that like has a has a masthead after you've done it for a few years go out on your own and like build you know take the beat that like you've tried to kind of like build and expand it and use and leverage AI to kind of build something that doesn't previously exist I mean like we lived in a world you know when I when I first started as a journalist like you know you actually needed people think of journalism now as like being about content right it's like how fast can you how fast can you actually write and report stories and get them out to your readers. That's what journalism is. How fast can you get your readers stories that are new and fresh and interesting that nobody else is telling them? Journalism, when I started, was considered a heavy manufacturing business. It wasn't considered content. It was about taking giant rolls of paper and You know. And as a result of that, that meant that very few people could do it because, you know, that old phrase, like, you don't get into an argument with somebody who can buy ink by the barrel. It used to be the driving phrase about, like, what life in American media was about and the rules of engagement that politicians had to observe. Well, that doesn't exist. anymore everybody everybody can ink doesn't cost anything and distribution doesn't cost anything so everybody can do it and so I think that like the word story just at the beginning one of the things that hasn't yet happened that I'm really interested to see is I actually think that some of the next set of I guess you can't call them newspapers but I guess the next set of news outlets are that you sort of think of as media companies will essentially come from, like, roll-ups of substacks, you know, where some smart businessman and marketer says, I'm going to pick, like, the 10 top substacks or newsletters on these various topics with this amount of audience, and i'm going to put them together under this umbrella and um create my own publication and it's like you could figure out a way to like tell the various owners and producers of each of those newsletters hey this you'll be able to produce more and get paid more and work less in that kind of a setup they would say absolutely i'm all over it so i kind of think we're i kind And I think it actually, and AI has the capability of reducing the costs of doing all that. You know, so like one of the things- And the time. Right. One of the great things that, one of the great things, for example, that's happened in Silicon Valley since I've been involved in it is the whole cloud computing revolution. And the reason I say that is because when I first started writing about Silicon Valley like 25 years ago- If you wanted to start a company, you needed office space, you needed computers, you needed servers, you needed monitors, you needed chairs, you needed all kinds of infrastructure to kind of get off the ground. One of the things that was amazing about when the App Store first started showing up during the mobile revolution, which kind of coincided with the development of cloud computing, especially at AWS, was that you had all these like app companies that were showing up out of nowhere that were basically like two guys and a credit card that were basically like, you know, starting out of their basement. You know, when you lower the cost of entry, when you lower the costs of getting into any particular industry, you improve creativity. You improve the kinds of things that people will create because more people can try. You know, So for example, I think that, you know, one of the things people talk about AI right now is it's going to put everybody out of work. You know, so for example, Andy Jassy just said, talked about all the people that like AI was going to force like Amazon to fire. Except at the same time, people are talking about like vibe coding. People, you know, like my friend Dan Roth, who at LinkedIn talked about like this whole coding project that he came up with on his own, that he was actually able to kind of just whole software that he was actually able to produce because he had this idea and he didn't have to learn how to code so all of a sudden we're in this spot where suddenly software because of ai has the possibility of becoming like a middle-class job i mean it used to be that you had to go to mit you know and get like five degrees in order to get like a good software job well now if like anybody with an idea for like how they want to kind of make their workflow work better can like vibe code it you know can run it through an AI program and come out with like something that like that would have taken like you know 10 like MIT PhDs to produce like 15 years ago that's really great
Dave Reddy:okay so let's finish with this you've both been very bullish about AI and what it can do for for journalism for the world I don't completely disagree but for the sake of perhaps being a bit of a devil's advocate it. You hear a lot of folks talking about either the need for regulation or self-regulation in the journalism industry and other industries, obviously, when it comes to AI. I just saw, I think this was James Cameron, but this actually sort of proves my point. Who knows if it was really James Cameron? He did a post with Terminator, I warned you 41 years ago about all this. I don't know if that's true or not, if it was him or not, because that's part of the problem with AI. I guess the point I'm asking is, am I being snooty? And are others who have journalism degrees or somewhat being snooty when we say, wait a minute, it used to be back in the 1800s that anybody could be a journalist. Was that necessarily a good thing? And then all of a sudden, in the 1900s, it became a college track. And to your point, Michael, professors taught it and so forth. If we go back to everybody being able to be a journalist, is that part of the problem we're facing right now with a sorts of fake news and things like that? Or is that a good thing? Do we need to regulate that? Does the government need to regulate that? Michael?
Michael Nuñez:Jeez, you know, huge question to end on. I think that, I think that look like AI will lead to more misinformation. It's just, it's just, that's the short answer. I think that it's easy, you know, and getting to kind of what Fred was just talking about. It's easier than ever to, to prop up a news site, whether it's good or bad. And so, you know, so a lot of people are taking some Some of them don't even live in this country. Some of them are nation state actors and basically just trying to sow discord among US citizens. So I think we will see an increase in misinformation in bad news in fake news. You know, you know, I've often said that I feel like we went from the information age when I graduated in 2009. And basically, from high school through college, I was deeply embedded in the information age and Napster and, and just the you know, the kind of early days of Google and then the early days of social media. And it was all so exciting. And then I think for a lot of millennials, our kind of fascination with the internet and kind of the excitement and fun and newness of this entire kind of high speed internet era, you know, I think the pendulum just swung the other way. And we're now in the misinformation age. And so actually, we've gone from having all of this information available at your fingertips to all of this bad information is now available at your fingertips. And I think, you know, I've thought a lot about this, I guess, over the years. And, you know, I think that it's probably been true through most of American history that good information has always cost money. And so bad information is free and it's always been free. And, you know, there was kind of the yellow journalism era when the printing press first came around that were, you know, a lot of people were telling sensational news and they kind of were dealing with their own fake news crisis at the time or basically just biased information being kind of distributed widely. But this scale is definitely a first. I think, you know, we basically have this global scale available very cheaply now. So yeah, so there will be more misinformation. It's easier to create deep fakes and some fake videos, fake images, just prop up an entirely fake news website. That stuff is increasing. in terms of frequency and just capability i i think that there's no way around that however you know i do think that like ai is not a life raft that's going to save the journalism industry but but i see it as kind of a weapon that can be used to fix a broken industry and of course it can be used to destroy things and kind of wreak havoc on society as well and it will don't get me wrong but i do think that people will also use this weapon for good i think that you know and and And I think that people won't, you know, the commodified news, like, you know, Apple releases new iPhone or whatever, X company releases Y product. I think, you know, that will, I think there was an era, like when I graduated in 2009, Apple releases iPhone 5 was probably the biggest story of the year, one of them, you know? And so whoever wrote that story at any one of the big tech publications was getting a ton of clicks, a ton of attention and being kind of, Heralded is like a great reporter, I think. And, you know, I just think that stuff's going to be harder and harder to leverage. It'll be completely commodified. And a lot of that stuff's going to get automated, I think, at least most of that process. And so what's really going to matter is just human insights, the human work. People are going to want to pay for premium products and indispensable insight. And so, you know, I think like we've moved, I guess my view on what's happened is we've moved from the monoculture of TV, newspapers, and magazines to kind of the, you know, like I guess omniculture, like, you know, where things are becoming more and more niche. So when I look across culture broadly, I think everything's becoming more niche. You know, it's harder to get a big movie made because people aren't going to the theaters and people are just kind of interested in the narrow slice of life that they are living And very few are actually like looking beyond that narrow path to see new perspectives and consume different types of media. So I think fashion is becoming more niche. Music is becoming more niche. News media is becoming more niche. And I think that will accelerate with artificial intelligence. We're going to be filtered into these narrow little views of the world. And you'll have personalized feeds. You already do in many cases have personalized feeds. I think that will only increase with AI because, of course, we'll be able to profile people better and, you know, create these psychographic profiles. So, so, yeah, you know, I don't think it's as bleak as it probably sounds. I do think that, you know, that, like, like, I still have a lot of faith in humanity. And I do think someone will, you know, use this for good. Like, for example, I think that AI could be used to combat, you know, some of the echo chamber problems and the kind of extremism online. I think right now, most news that is distributed has an inherent bias. And I think someone will package a news product as something that is less biased, get your news free from bias. And they'll use the automation as a selling point. It's like rather than having humans tell you what the big news is, our AI will actually sort through the big news of the day and tell you, without bias, what Trump's hundred first days were like, or whatever the big news story is. So rather than having to go to Fox or ABC or NBC or the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal, you'll refer to this AI product that will be, quote unquote, free from bias. Now, of course, every algorithm inherently has bias and these AI platforms, all these AI models are inherently biased. But I would bet money that someone will create a very successful news product claiming that it's unbiased and really relying on the AI to tell that story. And I think there is this hunger among readers to escape from the echo chambers. I think people are just tired. You know, we're in this post-truth era. There's so much noise. I think even MAGA is a little bit exhausted by the just the constant beat of this drum that you're supposed to be afraid. And and, you know, it's like like I think content creators, whether they're news or entertainment or infotainment, they're sort of incentivized to get an emotional reaction out of readers in order to stop them from doom scrolling. People are just kind of mindlessly doom scrolling in their off time. The thing that gets you to stop or click through or say like, what's going on here is usually some deeply emotional appeal, whether it's like fear or shock or whatever. And so I think that system has been running for a decade, probably more than a decade at this point. And I think readers are just like, I talk to so many people in SF that proudly say, I don't read any news. And I'm like, what? How is that? How do you live? How can you be an adult and not read the news? But I think they see it as something that they take a lot of pride in because it's like they're free from the mania that is really kind of dominating a lot of these conversations around current events. And you have to pick a side and It's just such a toxic information ecosystem at this point. And so I think there is like people are really hungry for and looking for a news product or a news source or something that they can gravitate to that is not a social media feed. I think the news feed fatigue is like at an all time high. And I think within the very near future, within the next one to two years, someone will launch, a news product that's going to be extremely successful because they're going to be kind of, you know, telling a story in contrast to the newsfeed. So rather than having you filtered into this little narrow sliver of perspectives or of biases or whatever, your personalized newsfeed, I think someone will just simplify that and say, you know, get your news free from bias. We'll do it with AI. Let the machine decide sort of what the facts are and at least help you navigate through some of these nuanced topics. And, you know, I don't know if it'll have a chat function or if it'll be spoken or whatever, but I do think that, you know, again, you know, journalists with AI will replace the journalists without AI. And so, you know, I don't think AI is going to save the entire journalism industry, but I do think that it will create new solutions for kind of a, you know, not even a dying industry, but just a really toxic... I feel like we're at sort of a low point in terms of the... just the quality of life and the quality of the conversation, I think, in news media right now. You know, we're really struggling to, there's so many important things happening right now and not enough people are talking about those big news events. And, you know, it worries me a little bit, but I do just, I'm a techno-optimist at heart and I do believe that, you know, we'll find a solution to all of this. And I assume that AI is going to be this foundational shift Again, it's more like the printing press or the internet. I think that it's kind of this utility that everyone will have to use. And so hopefully we have some innovative minds thinking about how to use it for good rather than how to use it for evil.
Dave Reddy:Fred, where do you stand? You've already said that you like the democratization to journalism that AI will bring, but is there any credence to the doomsayers who think, all right, This is it. We're letting the robots take over, both in journalism and in general.
Fred Vogelstein:No. First of all, like, when you talk about, like, robots taking over, if you go back in time, we have talking robots and computers putting every one of us out of work for as long as there have been robots. And... every time everybody, very smart people, say this time is different. And every time the explosion of new technology certainly alters jobs and puts some people out of work, but in the end it ultimately ends up creating more new jobs than the old jobs that it blew up. So maybe AI is the first technology that humans have ever created that will put all of us out of work. But if it is, that'll be the first time in human history that that's ever happened. And it's hard for me to see it. I also think that, like, in terms of the impact on news and on its impact on news and misinformation, you know, there's a cycle here, right? If you go back 100 years ago, 120 years ago... or even 140 years ago. Like, you know, Pulitzer and Hearst and built newspaper empires based on, you know, what enabled them to build newspaper empires? Well, essentially, it was a technology shift, right? So, what happened in the middle of the 19th century was that we invented the rural press. I mean, the presses that, like, used to, like, exist in all the movies. We figured out a way to, in a super fast way, produce like hundreds of thousands of copies of the same newspaper. And at the same time, because we invented the automobile, we developed sort of a way to distribute that newspaper far and wide. And so that led to like being able to, these newspaper empires that exploded in profitability and allowed Hearst Pulitzer and the rest of them to build buildings and become some ambitious entrepreneurs on the planet, essentially the modern day like tech billionaires. And what did they do? They printed newspapers that sold, that people wanted to read. So that led to like an explosion of yellow journals. And, you know, that started wars that didn't need to be started. I mean, it was pretty ugly. What caused that to change? Well, suddenly it became more profitable to sell newspapers that weren't doing that. Suddenly, in order to kind of like distinguish them, you know, newspapers, the whole idea of like newspapers being sort of the word of God and the whole idea of like journalism being like more of a profession rather than a trade and the whole idea of presenting sort of both sides of a story. didn't grow out of like some kind of altruistic thing it grew because like a bunch of people thought like this is the best way to make money and And I sort of think that, like, we're in a similar situation now. You know, this is the truism of technology is that, like, you know, it gives and it takes. I mean, everybody sort of thinks that, like, everybody thought, for example, and I was one of the guilty ones, that, like, the Internet was the most incredible new invention that mankind ever created and that it was going to democratize the world and reduce poverty and improve democracy and make the world a better place. And, you know, I was part of, like, the cool wire that, like, was writing stories about that. And, you know, that was, like, one of the most naive things that, like, I've ever thought in my entire life. Now, like, I actually think that, like, I have a lot of good company because, like, you know, a lot of really, really smart people around the world in Silicon Valley and all the publications I worked for thought the same thing. But, like, what were we thinking? I mean, it's like, when we invented the automobile, like, That turned out to be like the most incredible invention of like the 20th century. But we also like had, we also like suddenly like had people dying like by the droves in automobile crashers. So we figured out a way to kind of use the existing technology at the time to like figure out a way to kind of like solve that problem. We like invented anti-lock brakes and we invented like trunk driving laws and we invented seatbelt laws and we invented airbags and we did a bunch of things. And lo and behold, if you like look at the statistics, like, you know, fatalities like fell by half you know we're sort of at that like point right now where like okay the internet has come along and it was like this great thing for like the first like 15 years and then it suddenly social media came along and mobile came along and suddenly everybody was able to kind of say whatever they wanted and we now live in this we now live in this world where in a weird way like you know we're now having arguments that about, like, science versus religion that, like, you know, were the kinds of things that we read in history books, like, that happened in, like, the 16th century, like, where, like, okay, so-and-so has this new idea, let's, like, kill him because, like, he doesn't believe in God. And so, you know, it's kind of astonishing that, like, we can, like, go up into space and, like, actually look at, like, the poles melting and, like, we're still having a conversation about climate change. I mean, at least the people, like, five hundred years ago couldn't actually see the globe from like space and actually see it with their own eyes but like we're in the same spot now with news and information like people will figure out a way to use ai to create filters that like say like this is real this is not real and and people will figure out a way to come up with you know newspapers and news publications and that are more transparent about biases and make people feel more connected to, like, the reporting process. I mean, like, you sort of think about, like, Time and Newsweek. Like, you know, Time and Newsweek got created a hundred years ago as sort of a digest, right? Because in those days, like, everybody had, everybody, like, they were, you know, every city had two newspapers and many of them had, like, you know, a few of them had, like, a dozen. And nobody could So there was information overload. And so Time Newsweek were created as almost a digest so that people didn't have to read five newspapers to kind of see what was going on. They could actually read one magazine at the end of the week to kind of see what was going on. It also happened to be immensely profitable because it was one of the first ways to kind of do high-resolution color advertising. So you kind of combine those two technologies and you wind up with something that was incredibly powerful. We're in the same spot right now with AI. People are going to use it to kind of create new publications that are more trustworthy, have... that are more credible and figure out a way to filter as well as to also figure out a way to filter out all the kind of stuff that people are spouting off. In a weird way, people aren't saying anything online right now that they haven't thought for as long as humanity. The only difference is that you can actually hear it. Well, okay, so now we're figuring... you know, for thousands of years, like there was no way to actually hear the kind of crazy stuff that like people are kind of saying, but everybody's had conspiracy theories. So now, so what will happen now? We'll actually come up with like technologies to figure out a way not to hear all that stuff again. I don't know what it's going to look like because obviously if I knew what it was going to look like, I would do it myself, but I don't think we're in a bad place.
Dave Reddy:I look forward to the day when AI mutes conspiracy theories, Fred, and I On that note, the three of us could talk for probably about another four hours, but they only give me an hour. So gentlemen, thanks so much. This has been a really fascinating conversation, very thought-provoking, and I appreciate your optimism. I wish I shared it completely, but I shared enough. You've given me a lot to think about, and I'm sure our listeners too. So thanks again for joining us for our third anniversary show, and Michael, Fred, appreciate it. Thank you.
Fred Vogelstein:Thank you for having us.
Dave Reddy:I'd like to thank you all for listening today. And once again, a big thank you to our guests, Michael Nunez of VentureBeat and Fred Vogelstein of Crazy Stupid Tech for this special third anniversary episode of Pressing Matters. I'd also like to take a moment before signing off today to thank the folks who make Pressing Matters happen, from our fantastic guests to our producer engineer, Aileen Fernandez de Soto. If you only knew how much more intolerable I'd be as a host without Aileen's help. Now, if you let me brag on behalf of the team for just another moment. I'm also pleased to announce that we've been nominated for a Reagan Communications Zenith Award for Best Podcast. Winners will be announced in November. Bravo crew, win or show. So here's to three years and on to season four, which debuts next month with yet another member of the B2B Tech Top 200. In the meantime, if you've got feedback on today's podcast, or if you'd like to learn more about Big Valley Marketing and how we identified the B2B Tech Top 200, be sure to drop me an email Thanks for listening. And as always, think big.
