On May 16, Salt Lake Community College welcomed James Dao, a veteran reporter and the current editorial page editor for the Boston Globe.
Dao gave a free lecture to a group of students and faculty from SLCC and the University of Utah in the Construction Trades building at Taylorsville Redwood Campus. In his talk, Dao touched on topics like the use of AI in journalism, how to be a smart consumer of news, and important characteristics of good opinion pieces.
AI in journalism
In a brief introduction, Dao explained his extensive journalistic background, which includes nearly 30 years as a correspondent and reporter at the New York Times. He then transitioned to a Q&A with the audience.
One of the first questions the audience posed to Dao was whether AI had a place in journalism. Dao responded by saying that tools such as ChatGPT will, sooner than later, become a primary method of sourcing information for news stories.
“AI will [soon] replace the typical ‘Google search.’ We’re [also] trying to use it to summarize documents, court records and reports by government agencies that [we] may not have time to read,” Dao said.
Dao also said to be aware that AI-generated documents don’t inform the user of the origin of the information they provide.
“It won’t tell you where [the information] came from,” Dao explained. “For example, it [an AI generated summary] may have come from the Boston Globe, but it won’t tell you.”
At one point, an attendee asked if AI could someday replace “boots-on-the-ground” reporting. Dao said yes, but only in certain instances.
He then provided a hypothetical example of a local sports reporter who simply doesn’t have the bandwidth to cover every single high school baseball game in their surrounding area. According to Dao, that reporter could ask every coach to send their box scores, which in turn could be fed into ChatGPT. With the box scores, ChatGPT could generate a summary of every inning played.
Dao clarified that an article based on such limited reporting and information would inevitably have to be very basic. Another downside he pointed out is that it wouldn’t have more qualitative quotes from players, coaches and spectators.
“There are limits to what it can do. It’s not going to replace all news reporting jobs, but it could replace some,” Dao said.
Dao also stressed the importance of appropriate and contextual use of such tools. For example, Dao said an AI tool could give the minutes for a school board meeting, but if a reporter wanted to dig deeper and get to why a board member said something, they would need to have a face-to-face conversation.
“Humans are still better,” Dao said.
Being informed
An audience member claimed that, because of the seemingly incessant negativity contained in the news, many young people end up choosing not to pay attention to it at all. Dao had a suggestion for this.
“It’s okay to dive in and out,” Dao said. “You can follow developments in Gaza without reading every op-ed. Check in on it once a week.”
Expanding on the topic, Dao gave his thoughts on how to be an informed media consumer. He said to strive to become well-rounded on issues by reading a diverse selection of publications and taking in a myriad of views rather than remaining one-sided. Dao said that, for both reporters and consumers, being well-rounded is crucial to democracy.
Dao added that it is also crucial for the news industry to have humans reporting directly on other humans, which is done simply by talking face-to-face with humans and getting their views.
“[Journalists] should go into the community and ask how people feel,” Dao said. “Not everyone is going to agree. The journalist’s job is to reflect more than one view. I’ve never seen a community where all the views were the same. It doesn’t exist.”
The balancing of op-eds
Another audience member asked what makes a good opinion piece, from the perspective of a news writer. Dao, who is in charge of editorials at the Boston Globe, said he often encourages people to write about things they care about and strive for angles that others haven’t tried before.
“Try to say something that others haven’t said. We want a new and different take on things,” Dao said.
Dao went on to say that another important element of an opinion piece is to acknowledge both sides.
“In op-ed, you’re making an argument that the other side is wrong,” Dao explained. “What I tell people is you should have something from the other side, and you should understand it. If you pretend the argument isn’t there, and there is no other argument, you’re not persuading anybody.”
“The goal isn’t to tell people who already agree with you how to think,” Dao continued. “The goal is to get the person who is confused or in the middle or on the fence to say, ‘Oh, that’s a good argument.’”
Marco Lozzi, a University of Utah communication major with an emphasis in journalism and minor in photography who works for The Daily Utah Chronicle, said he enjoyed the presentation and gained valuable insight from the conversation between Dao and the audience.
“[It was an] excellent presentation of his experience at [the] New York Times and Boston Globe about opinion, the relationship between opinion, news in today’s journalism world and the use of AI. [It was] very informative for the students,” Lozzi said of the talk.
