The death of real news, at least in the United States, was money and venture capital. AI is just one thing attempting to fill the gap. There hasn't been real news in America for a decade or more. It happened well before AI was on the scene.

To me, there is no difference between AI fake news, podcasts as news, influencers "informing", or celebrity talking heads streaming commentary about current events. Its all garbage. Whether OpenAI computers make it up, or a podcaster presents their opinion as fact, the result is the same. We are all susceptible to being influenced by it as if it were news.

Money is a broad term, and can mean quite a few things. VC money had little to do, and the changes were already at play before VC was even invented.

Changes in the media environment began with radio, the reduction of funding, the decision of some media channels to move away from factual reporting, and then the internet.

Verification is expensive, and the death of local news and consolidation of news, has been eroding the ability of the market place of ideas to have ideas compete fairly.

Once the internet came out, the end of classifieds was the death knell for most journalism. Even today the NYT manages stays afloat because of its games, not because people pay for journalism.

Sadly, it is even cheaper to report on things when you don’t care about accuracy

I remember how environmental science was eviscerated on Fox, and the amazing “teach the controversy” angle of attack against evolution, to push forward creationism and intelligent design.

I highly recommend Network Propaganda by Yochai Benkler and co. Not only do they provide a history of how the American media environment changed, but they also gather and analyze data on how social media use and media consumption intersect.

“Money and venture capital” is an easy to swallow pill that helps satiate the desire for a bad guy, but it ignores the fact that there is no mechanism by which an upstanding journalist can put food on the table.

There was a brief period where information was difficult to copy and distribute without exposing one’s self to liability for copyright infringement, and the barrier to access that information was high enough such that you could convince people to pay you. Neither of those dynamics apply today.

>>money and venture capital

Yes, this.

I used to think AI news summaries would kill it, but having tried Kagi news (first impressions as a daily driver for a week), I no longer think so, particularly because Kagi are doing everything right.

Nearly everything I could think of is in there, yet it still feels unsatisfying and oddly less informative (perhaps because I'm less engaged?). Kagi builds a summary from multiple sources, cites the sources, and extracts various impacts/angles (business, technical, industry, historical, etc.) and different party reactions, etc., and more. Yet...

I really don't know what it is and I'll have to use it more to try to identify it. My current conjecture is that it is still more satisfying and informative to read a reporter's view of the event, even if I disagree with it, than a homogenized summary.

I'm also finding similar reactions to articles where I can tell parts are just lifted from the AI — it breaks my engagement with the story/report (kind of like a badly done cinema film breaks my suspension of disbelief and disengages my attention from the story).