170 Conclusion
will play an important role: such information is often freely available
but, until it is provided in a narrative format, audiences struggle to understand it. More and more, software will provide the role of an agent
in transforming those data into something more usuable by us, and the
current level of automated assistants such as that seen by Apple’s Siri,
Amazon’s Alexa, and Microsoft’s Cortana is very much an early iteration of how an increasing number of us will engage with and organise
our environments.
In many cases, the transformations that have taken place in the delivery of journalism since the turn of the millennium have their roots in
activities and processes that were begun before the end of the twentieth
century, such as the roll-out of 24-hour news or the consolidation of
media delivery via multinational monopolies. The two major changes,
which were impossible to predict 20 years – or even a decade – ago,
are just how much the profitability of the media (and thus, in many
although not all cases, its sustainability) has shifted the tech giants who
are the main subject of this book, as well as the increasingly important role of automation. I do not have an automatically bleak view of
the future of journalism, however. There will, indeed, be a shakeup of
many news providers, and conditions for local and regional publishers
is pitiful, so much so that even governmental organisations are increasingly concerned about maintaining the links between journalism and
local democracy. Yet just as the election of Donald Trump and the vote
for Brexit, among other elements, has made politics more relevant for
many in the west, so the realisation of just how easily digital platforms
can be infiltrated with fake news has also stimulated renewed interest in the sources of journalism, with more people turning to outlets
such as The New York Times and The Guardian than ever before. Each
time President Trump declares the NYT to be “failing”, he appears to
drive a few hundred more readers to its pages. Elsewhere in the world,
the advantages offered by social media in terms of easily connecting to
diverse and disparate audiences have also been taken up with enthusiasm by small media providers who lack the infrastructure to broadcast
or distribute news to a wide range of people, and while this book has
been extremely critical of the influence of tech giants on journalism,
it is also the case that they have frequently improved the lot of small
providers. With regard to automation, outside of a very small number
of categories, such as financial journalism and some aspects of sport
reporting, we are still at the very early stages of algorithmic journalism
although robo-gatekeepers already have a crucial role to play in categorising the huge streams of information that flow around the world
each day. As has been demonstrated again and again in this book, the
implementation of such gatekeeping – often driven by the desire for
profit rather than quality – has sometimes been disastrous, but the alternative of legions of human editors is almost certainly impossible nor
will play an important role: such information is often freely available
but, until it is provided in a narrative format, audiences struggle to understand it. More and more, software will provide the role of an agent
in transforming those data into something more usuable by us, and the
current level of automated assistants such as that seen by Apple’s Siri,
Amazon’s Alexa, and Microsoft’s Cortana is very much an early iteration of how an increasing number of us will engage with and organise
our environments.
In many cases, the transformations that have taken place in the delivery of journalism since the turn of the millennium have their roots in
activities and processes that were begun before the end of the twentieth
century, such as the roll-out of 24-hour news or the consolidation of
media delivery via multinational monopolies. The two major changes,
which were impossible to predict 20 years – or even a decade – ago,
are just how much the profitability of the media (and thus, in many
although not all cases, its sustainability) has shifted the tech giants who
are the main subject of this book, as well as the increasingly important role of automation. I do not have an automatically bleak view of
the future of journalism, however. There will, indeed, be a shakeup of
many news providers, and conditions for local and regional publishers
is pitiful, so much so that even governmental organisations are increasingly concerned about maintaining the links between journalism and
local democracy. Yet just as the election of Donald Trump and the vote
for Brexit, among other elements, has made politics more relevant for
many in the west, so the realisation of just how easily digital platforms
can be infiltrated with fake news has also stimulated renewed interest in the sources of journalism, with more people turning to outlets
such as The New York Times and The Guardian than ever before. Each
time President Trump declares the NYT to be “failing”, he appears to
drive a few hundred more readers to its pages. Elsewhere in the world,
the advantages offered by social media in terms of easily connecting to
diverse and disparate audiences have also been taken up with enthusiasm by small media providers who lack the infrastructure to broadcast
or distribute news to a wide range of people, and while this book has
been extremely critical of the influence of tech giants on journalism,
it is also the case that they have frequently improved the lot of small
providers. With regard to automation, outside of a very small number
of categories, such as financial journalism and some aspects of sport
reporting, we are still at the very early stages of algorithmic journalism
although robo-gatekeepers already have a crucial role to play in categorising the huge streams of information that flow around the world
each day. As has been demonstrated again and again in this book, the
implementation of such gatekeeping – often driven by the desire for
profit rather than quality – has sometimes been disastrous, but the alternative of legions of human editors is almost certainly impossible nor