What losing an ampersand does to a journalist
The focus is on building infrastructure, tools, computational models, and systems tailored for newsgathering and news consumption in an AI-mediated information world.
When I started this site early in 2024, agents did not exist. When I thought of a user, I pictured a human being. The site's subject was how structures and engineering might help journalists engage their audience by better meeting their user needs.
That assumption is no longer valid in an AI-mediated information system. Users—human users, that is—have their own engineering team taking care of their needs for them, and the debate has shifted to whether the journalist is still a human being, and whether that is a virtue or an advantage.
A name change is therefore in order, and this site is leaving its ampersand behind.
Journalism and engineering, taken as two distinct fields meeting in the middle, have lost their relevance. The idea of reporters working alongside engineers, a department bridging two separate camps, or even individual journalists with dual fluency—that is all moot. Still worthy, but moot.
I propose journalism engineering as a singular practice instead: journalism as a noun adjunct modifying engineering. The focus is on building infrastructure, tools, computational models, and systems tailored for newsgathering and news consumption in an AI-mediated information world.
It also pushes the practice of journalism back, out of the engineering fold, into a discipline of pure, fact-based reporting.