Six ways technology can save the media

A fierce debate raged recently among media pros in the Gulf about the impact of technology on food photography (I know, but we all have our hills to die on).

While consensus very much wasn’t reached, it did make me wonder what other traditional aspects of the media industry may benefit from a healthy injection of modern technology…

The Foreign Correspondent

A near-mythical newsroom entity. Files ineligible, gin-tinged copy two days late from a tropical members club, leaving the shrinking pool of subs to meticulously decipher and then completely rewrite. Using Grok to summarise the local Twitter sentiment would likely generate similar results, and it wouldn’t keep trying to claim safaris on expenses. 

The Media Consultant

Arrives at the Monday morning stand-up unannounced with an iPad and a hard copy of the FT. Spends three months working from a laptop in one of the office’s only two meeting rooms, then delivers a 30-slide report filled with tiny text and inaccurate page numbering. Canva will deliver the exact same results, only without watercooler chat about golf, Joe Rogan, and why he’s going long on Tesla. 

The Editor-in-Chief

Gone are the days of these journalistic behemoths wielding their angry red pens over the day’s copy. Today you’ll find the EIC busy courting advertisers and fielding angry phone calls from investors wanting to know when their kids can start as Global News Editor. Come on Publishers, surely an agentic ChatGPT could step in here?!

The Media Buyers

These guys just do long lunches with the billboard guys followed by deals drawn up on napkins at the golf course, right? I say we cut out the middleman and launch a shared spreadsheet with Gemini as the rate arbitrator. All of the convenience, none of the cheap aftershave and baffling price hikes. 

The Procurement Team

My thoughts on this process-not-a-person are well documented. This painful part of modern business is ripe for some technological Armageddon. Surely slinging the whole thing into Claude and letting it manage things would make things easier on everyone. Would that make it ripe for scamming and fraud? Probably. Would that be infinitely less painful than the current status quo? Definitely. 

The Sub-Editors

The idea of replacing Subs with AI is terrifying. No piece of technology will ever wield as much power, creativity and downright menace as a sub. I say we go full circle sooner rather than later and replace these new AI-driven CMS systems with human sub-editors to really blow Sam Altman’s mind.