[braza]

> How does AI attend meetings, ask questions of local officials or bodies, provide in-person reports and original fact based copy?

I noticed that most of the journalism that I care about ~drifted~ from the writing to non-structured media (e.g. podcasts, videos), where in writting we have only things oriented to the SEO and future reference and historical purposes, and the actual red meat content comes in "conversations" or in aired media in youtube channels.

Back in the day, a journalist could sit in a hearing or in an audience, and you could read at the weekend a deep dive with key points in the trial, points made by the prosecution and defense, the verdict, and the entire trial dynamic and buildup. Currently you have in writing only some high-level summary with no specifics and maybe some journalist opinion, and the entire breakdown you can have it on Youtube.

For me, this is one of the two saddest trends that I see in modern journalism (another one is the lack of investigative journalism revealing political corruption), where you can only get in the depths by going to the prolix audio and video media formats.

[cogman10]

At the local level, there is (almost) no modern journalism. Large media companies have swooped in and gobbled up pretty much every major newspaper, local tv news, local radio news. They've then fired the journalists and switched everything to sites that push mainly national stories mixed in with 100 clickbait marketing garbage ads.

And for national journalism, it's 90% about access journalism. Every interview is softballs, no follow up, etc. Journalists almost never press for an answer. And it's just so absurdly lazy. Rather than actually reporting or investigating anything journalists just republish press briefings.

[braza]

100% that.

> Large media companies have swooped in and gobbled up pretty much every major newspaper, local tv news, and local radio news.

I think the main issue is related to the funding of those projects. As a non-American but former resident of San Francisco, I would like to see more things like [1] (regardless of the political side) for local politics.

It's a pity that the national news is pushed so hard that local councils and mayors can do almost everything without any pushback, even being the kind of politics that has a direct and immediate effect on most normal people.

[1] - https://www.piratewires.com/p/downtown-is-for-drug-users-san...

[throwaway48476]

Livestreaming trials has dome more to tamp down corruption in the courts than anything else. Except federal, they're above scrutiny of course.