Struggling to Find My Niche and Being a Boomer About AI
I’m going to get into some interesting points in the Reuters Digital News Report, but I first want to reflect on the contact practice assignment.
I’m finding it difficult to really narrow down what niche topic exactly I want to form my launch plan around. I do really feel like the idea of a runner de-influencer is solid, and so much can come out of that. Or, as mentioned in class, it could be part of this sort of quarter/mid-life crisis activities. Aiyana in class also put in the comments one class about how being specifically a vegan runner would be a niche on its own as well. But I don’t think I want to have vegan be a huge part of my brand. It’s important to me, obviously, but I’m not trying to tell people how to eat and live. And I really wouldn’t want to come across like I’m an authority on nutrition. I wouldn’t feel comfortable sharing too much about the fueling side of running because I personally know the effects that food comparison can have on people.
I also of course keep circling back to the idea of some sort of music-related niche, my entire drive to enter the journalism MLA program was to hopefully make my way into music journalism specifically. But I find it’s even harder to nail down a sort of specific thing in regards to it. There’s the new music reviewer angle, an auto-biographical angle of the life of a DIY musician, or the deep-dive angle on bands or songs that I enjoy and want to learn/share about.
I’ve even thought about expanding upon my podcasting class project of wild moments in history that made you go “huh??”. My final project in that class was a self-produced episode of a podcast I titled Humbled History, detailing the Australian “Emu War” of 1932. (Basically, hungry emus ruined crops and machine guns were a new and shiny solution.)
I think what I’m grappling with is that there isn’t quite something that I feel I can offer that’s different/interesting enough, or that I feel I’m passionate enough about to be sharing my specific experience or opinion on that others will find interesting. I like to yap as much as the next person, but I think I need to be assured first that people want to listen to it.
Anyway, moving on to a few points from the Reuters Digital News Report…
“When it comes to underlying sources of false or misleading information, online influencers and personalities are seen as the biggest threat worldwide (47%), along with national politicians (47%)”
I mentioned this in class, that I worry about these online news content individuals checking their biases in their reporting. Like, this Reuters report notes a heavier right-wing influence on Twitter (I’m not calling it X, sorry Elon), and I have to wonder how many biases and ill-informed takes these “journalists” are relaying as genuine “news” to followers. I also am just so incredibly not shocked about politicians being misleading or giving false information. Which is deeply, deeply depressing since they’re in power and most without term limits. But hey, that’s the world we live in…
“We find AI chatbots and interfaces emerging as a source of news as search engines and other platforms integrate real-time news. The numbers are still relatively small overall (7% use for news each week) but much higher with under-25s (15%)”
Wow, HATE that. A friend of mine who is a high school English teacher has come to notice that this is sadly growing in prominence, too. He’s noticed that many teenagers aren’t even doing basic research anymore; they’re just simply scrolling far enough for the Google AI summary (which, side note- is only correct like maybe a quarter of the time, in my experience…) and that’s kind of scary. Young people are using ChatGPT as a search engine increasingly as well, and not to be a boomer, but that is MIND BOGGLING to me. What do you mean that some people are not even, at least, googling for the Wikipedia link??? It just makes me fear for the development of critical thought in younger minds. I know convenience has become very important to humans as a society, but I genuinely believe that the ability to think critically, vet sources, and fact check should be infinitely more important.
“More generally, however, audiences in most countries remain skeptical about the use of AI in the news and are more comfortable with use cases where humans remain in the loop.”
Thank god. More of this healthy skepticism, please. With AI, and online news influencers and politicians while we’re at it.