Adapting To Changes To Stay Relevant

Gorkhapatra turns 123 on Sunday and the Gorkhapatra Corporation turns 61. We have a strong legacy and are still one of the most credible media organisations in the country. However, we must now start working on our relevance because, in mass media, any news is only as good as the number of people who read it.

As technology continues to advance, it is transforming every aspect of our lives, including, for us in the media, the way we report and disseminate news. Convergence and multimedia-driven progress in communication and outreach are increasingly making our job easier and more efficient but are also gradually making it redundant. Many tasks, such as copy editing, source verification and data collection, can today be done by computer programmes with minimal human oversight. For the first time in many of our careers, at least here in Nepal, there are now some valid questions being raised about the need for journalists within journalism.

Automated journalism has found its footing in the journalistic profession and it is not uncommon to find news articles generated by algorithms or ‘bots’. Artificial Intelligence (AI) platforms today have the ability to scan large amounts of data (reporting), order key points, insert details like names, places and figures and structure the story in a pre-programmed style (writing) and then review the output to check for grammar, tone and voice (editing). News that included sports scores, weather, financial reports and election updates are on their way to being fully automated.

And this, whether we like it or not, is just the beginning. As technology continues to develop, it is likely to grow in influence and impact even more aspects of the media industry.

So, what does it mean? Does it mean we will all lose our jobs? Well, let us look at it this way. What it means is that we have to adapt to the new hardware and software being presented to us and integrate it into our work. If we do not do that, then we will risk falling behind, our revenues dropping, our organisations closing and yes, maybe us losing our jobs.

There are sceptics among us who, quite rightly, point out the perils of embracing AI or automation. ChatGPT, for instance, does not always provide accurate or unbiased information. Here is the information it provided when asked to introduce The Rising Nepal in a paragraph: "The Rising Nepal is the national daily newspaper of Nepal. It was first published in 1951 as a weekly newspaper, and then later converted into a daily newspaper in 1965. The first editor of The Rising Nepal was Hari Govinda Rimal. The paper is owned by the Gorkhapatra Corporation, which is a government-owned corporation that also publishes another major Nepali daily, Gorkhapatra."

There are several mistakes here. First, The Rising Nepal began its publication in 1965, not in 1951. It was never a weekly newspaper; it began life as a daily. And the first editor was Barun Shumsher Rana, not Hari Govinda Rimal. We can see how using ChatGPT for news without human supervision can be disastrous.

Nevertheless, there are positives too. Looking at ChatGPT again, due to its ability to analyse large amounts of data and provide quick responses to user inquiries, it can help news organisations to cover breaking news and provide updates in real time. This can be particularly beneficial for developing stories where the media needs to give new updates every few seconds. Here, letting ChatGPT take over ensures instant reporting and frees up human journalists to take a closer look at the events and issues and produce investigative stories and explainers that go beyond the headlines and unearth the hidden facts.

Similarly, writing assistants like Grammarly can help refine and structure news stories to ensure that the news that goes out to the audience is clear, concise and understandable. They can detect plagiarism and provide sources for uncited information, which is great for research and verification of facts. They help reporters edit their own pieces, which is great for small media houses that may not have the resources needed to hire a team of editors. They can also be customised and used to package content for individual readers or viewers. This allows the media to deliver the content people need in the forms they want.

The technology available to us today can also do subsidiary tasks like convert our text to audio, use our stories as prompts to generate suitable photos (and now videos) to go with them and detect problematic content such as discriminatory terminologies and hateful rhetoric. They can also generate new forms of journalism, such as virtual reality experiences. All this makes news more engaging, immersive and easy to consume without requiring much investment from the media houses.

Also, AI, in particular, can be deployed to identify and track social trends. They can mine and analyse data from social media, for example, and see what people are talking about and what stories need to be covered. This can help journalists stay ahead of potential news issues and provide exclusive contents before competitors.

So where does Gorkhapatra fit into all this? Nowhere at present. We still seem to be a print-focused corporation at a time when print is in decline. We have not made optimum use of our website. There is so much potential for experimentation with interactive photos and graphics, cross-platform linking, mobile journalism and more. They require very little effort and investment. But they do require willpower to do it.

We can take some consolation from the fact that Gorkhapatra’s online portal at least does infographics and puts out videos. Its sister publications do not even have that. None of the Gorkhapatra Corporation’s five publications, including the flagship Gorkhapatra, have a notable presence on social media. Our readers have moved beyond Facebook and Twitter, but we have not. We do not post the exquisite photos our talented photographers take on Instagram and we do not put shorts of our videos on TikTok. Even on Facebook and Twitter, we do not respond to people’s queries and feedback and we do not get creative with our captions. We only dump our links and hope the readers like it, which is the wrong way to go about things today.

Understandably, many of us do not want to overdo it. In our effort to be ‘trendy’, we can appear 'gimmicky'. But it is a risk we have to take because gimmicks, after all, only attract eyes. If we were told that an outlet used ChatGPT or any other bot to write news, would we not read it? If a big media house started making TikToks a part of its content package, would we not follow it to see what it looked like? If a newspaper started using memes or GIFs to elaborate on or emphasise their news, would we not check it out, at least once? People are attracted to what is new and different. It does not mean we have to fundamentally change our production system. It just means that we must begin experimenting in places we can.

(Mishra is a journalist at The Rising Nepal.)