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<title>Daily-Dose</title><meta content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" name="viewport"/><link href="styles/simple.css" rel="stylesheet"/><link href="../styles/simple.css" rel="stylesheet"/><style>*{overflow-x:hidden;}</style><link href="https://unpkg.com/aos@2.3.1/dist/aos.css" rel="stylesheet"/><script src="https://unpkg.com/aos@2.3.1/dist/aos.js"></script></head>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-down" id="daily-dose">Daily-Dose</h1>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" data-aos-anchor-placement="top-bottom" id="contents">Contents</h1>
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<ul>
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<li><a href="#from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-vox">From Vox</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-the-hindu-national-news">From The Hindu: National News</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-ars-technica">From Ars Technica</a></li>
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<li><a href="#from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</a></li>
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</ul>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-new-yorker">From New Yorker</h1>
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<ul>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Can a New Spanish-Language Media Group Help Donald Trump?</strong> - Americano Media hopes to reach a nationwide conservative audience. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/can-a-new-spanish-language-media-group-help-donald-trump">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>The Evolving Free-Speech Battle Between Social Media and the Government</strong> - A recent court ruling dramatically curtailed the federal bureaucracy’s ability to communicate with Internet platforms. What’s at stake when free speech harms the public? - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-evolving-free-speech-battle-between-social-media-and-the-government">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Vermont’s Catastrophic Floods and the Spread of Unnatural Disasters</strong> - In parts of the Northeast, two months of rain fell in two days. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-a-warming-planet/vermonts-catastrophic-floods-and-the-spread-of-unnatural-disasters">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Florida’s Vanishing Sparrows</strong> - A group of eccentric endangered birds serves as a bellwether of the climate crisis. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/floridas-vanishing-sparrows">link</a></p></li>
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<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A Mysterious Third Party Enters the Presidential Race</strong> - No Labels is obscure but well funded. Could it have an outsized impact on the election? Plus, the journalist Donovan Ramsey on his chronicle of the crack-cocaine epidemic. - <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-new-yorker-radio-hour/a-mysterious-third-party-enters-the-presidential-race">link</a></p></li>
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</ul>
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<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-vox">From Vox</h1>
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<ul>
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<li><strong>Colson Whitehead on the heists, fire, and movie magic of his new novel Crook Manifesto</strong> -
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<figure>
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<img alt="The cover of Colson Whitehead’s book “Crook Manifesto.”" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/al6lOz79C7dx-gT8AZ7RlB-OmCA=/0x722:1875x2128/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72461384/9780385545150.0.jpg"/>
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<figcaption>
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Doubleday Books
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</figcaption>
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</figure>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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The two-time Pulitzer winner is using his Harlem Shuffle trilogy to tell the history of New York.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="6mu9n3">
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Colson Whitehead has had a big decade. He won back-to-back Pulitzers for his novels <a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-underground-railroad-colson-whitehead/7280984"><em>The Underground Railroad</em></a> (2016) and <a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-nickel-boys-colson-whitehead/16569430"><em>The Nickel Boys</em></a> (2019). Then he saw <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/22423837/underground-railroad-review-amazon-miniseries-barry-jenkins-colson-whitehead-book"><em>The Underground Railroad</em></a> get adapted into one of the most critically acclaimed TV series of 2021. Now, he’s following it all up with his new novel <a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/crook-manifesto/18888269"><em>Crook Manifesto</em></a>, the second volume in the trilogy he began with 2021’s <a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/harlem-shuffle-colson-whitehead/16311673"><em>Harlem Shuffle</em></a>.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="KYEzkH">
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The Harlem Shuffle books have a deceptively simple premise. They deal with one Ray Carney, a midcentury Harlem furniture salesman striving after upper-middle-class respectability — with the help of a modest sideline in reselling stolen goods. In each novel, Carney falls half-accidentally into one criminal caper after another, with results that are often moving, frequently funny, and always extremely fun to read.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FyTwR4">
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Whitehead’s great trick is to make Carney not only a compelling protagonist but also a window. Through his eyes, we see Harlem and New York shift and realign themselves through the turbulent 20th century. <em>Harlem Shuffle</em> takes place in the gleaming, prosperous New York of the 1960s, with crime-ridden Harlem hidden in northern Manhattan like a dirty secret. In <em>Crook Manifesto</em> we reach the 1970s, when, as Carney observes, “You knew the city was going to hell if the Upper East Side was starting to look like crap, too.”
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="duVrh8">
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I called up Whitehead to find out more about how he built Carney’s world. Together, we talked about police corruption, how to write a three-act structure, and the ever-changing landscape of New York City. Highlights of our conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity, are below.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zc1XHn">
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<strong>One of the big arcs in this book is the destabilization of New York in the 1970s. What drew you to writing about that moment in time?</strong>
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wthJZf">
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I started with an idea to write about a heist novel set in the ’60s, and then it sort of expanded. It became two books and then three books. It’s tracing the main character, Ray Carney, over 30 years, but also the city.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MYzsR3">
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It’s a cliché to say, “The city’s almost a character,” but it became apparent that the city was a character. The same way that Ray Carney has his ups and downs, a city is going through its transformations as well. In the ’70s, New York was a pretty hard place to live in. The city was bankrupt. Crime was at an all-time high. It makes a compelling stage for Ray Carney’s adventures, and also is an important part of the city’s history.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="W9ZNsb">
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<strong>What made you decide to expand </strong><em><strong>Harlem Shuffle</strong></em><strong> out into a trilogy?</strong>
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PEfkro">
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I was enjoying it. I kept coming up with different stories for Ray. It started off as one story: <em>Harlem Shuffle</em>. And then I kept coming up with more capers. So that first book became three different adventures. Halfway through writing that book, I came up with even more and it was too big for one book, so it became two. I’ve never done a trilogy before, but I’ve never had a world that I want to keep exploring. If I step back, it’s maybe not three books, but one 1,200-page story about a man and the city.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TWA6hU">
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<strong>What’s interesting is that to me is that the book feels more serialized than a lot of your other work. I mean, I’m always very impressed by your three-act structuring. It’s always very crisp and clean. But the three sections of </strong><em><strong>Crook Manifesto</strong></em><strong> feel very discrete in a way that I haven’t seen from you before.</strong>
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="dg2EOJ">
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I sort of see him as three novellas that come together, Voltron-style, to make one book through their themes. Each adventure can stand alone, but I think they gain power together. Fire is an important thing. It builds from chapter to chapter, starting off in the margins in the first section in 1971 and of course becoming a major driver of the plot in the third section.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="uipp4f">
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I am plotting each story individually and each story does have its three acts, but also, each story is one act in the overall book itself.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="sHdwB7">
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<strong>I want to talk a little about the </strong><a href="https://www.wnyc.org/series/knapp-commission-hearings"><strong>Knapp Commission</strong></a><strong>, this 1970 investigation into corruption in the NYPD, which looms over the first section of the book. Was that a story that you were familiar with before you started writing, or did you come upon it during research?</strong>
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="QpmTWQ">
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I knew about it from <em>Serpico</em>. I was a big movie fan growing up, and part of the book is inspired by ’70s crime <a href="https://www.vox.com/movies">movies</a> like <em>Dog Day Afternoon</em>, another Sydney Labette movie. He did the movie <em>Serpico</em>, and I was 11 or 12 and saw it on afternoon <a href="https://www.vox.com/tv">television</a> and that’s how I first heard of the Knapp Commission. With this book, I’m trying to find different things in New York history I can hang on for a story that will serve Ray Carney, and it was cool to go back to Peter Moss’s nonfiction book about Frank Serpico, to go to the original <a href="https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/knapp-commission-report-police-corruption">Knapp Commission documents</a>. So I learned about it from a movie and then ended up making my own story out of it.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mXyh7f">
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<strong>I was researching it to talk about it with you, and I found this</strong><a href="https://www.villagevoice.com/2020/01/25/the-knapp-connection/"><strong> Village Voice article</strong></a><strong> written shortly after the report from the Commission came out in 1973. It says, “There is no more talk of a few rotten apples in the barrel. It is the barrel that is rotten. The only trouble is that we are all still inside it, and the Commission has not told us how to get out.” </strong>
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wiLEf1">
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<strong>It really speaks to this sense that the book evokes so beautifully, that the legal system has no strategies in place to fix this catastrophe developing in the city, and the strategies it does present turn out to be just another grift. Was that one of the ideas you were interested in developing as you wrote?</strong>
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="MhmOXk">
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There’s no institution that remains uncorrupted in this book: City Hall, real estate, the police department. The worldview of this book is not very cheerful — except, I don’t know, I think Ray Carney seems to be having a good time most of the time. I think we can put our trust in individuals and our family unit or friends, but all the institutions in the book are definitely corrupt.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="kVKQMA">
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<strong>You evoke this sense of persistent corruption and a kind of stasis that it creates. At the same time, you’re also dealing with this idea that the city is in constant flux and a cycle of destruction and recreation. So how do you think about keeping those ideas in dialogue with each other?</strong>
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="90vE4J">
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They exist at the same time, that idea of “churn” as I call it in the book, the renewal. Transformation is part of our own personal lives. So Ray Carney has his ups and downs and of course the city is going through its own transformations.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PIKV1k">
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The end of<em> Harlem Shuffle</em> deals with the days of Camelot and JFK-era optimism. The space race. The World’s Fair in Queens is underway. But two miles away in Harlem, the city’s in disrepair. We’re going to the ’70s after that. And then the ’80s, when the city does sort of climb out of its fiscal crisis. Wall Street becomes another powerful engine of change again. And then in the late ’80s, if you lived in New York City, you can see the AIDS crisis and the crack epidemic and the recession coming again. That’s the cycle of people’s lives and life in a city.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="I6hzHa">
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I had to research the history of Harlem, and the city’s always being laid low. By a <a href="https://www.vox.com/terrorism">terrorist attack</a>. A pandemic, which was happening when I was writing the book. We’re at war with the British. We’re at war with the Native Americans we stole the island from. There’s fires and yellow fever and terrorist attacks, and the city has to come back and always does. So there’s a resiliency there that’s in our main character, that’s in the supporting cast, and also in the city itself.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="4nvaCV">
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<strong>Besides the corruption in government institutions, we also see corruption reaching into the entertainment industry. That’s most apparent with the second section about the blaxploitation movie. But I kept thinking about it also in the first section, when Carney’s daughter is just obsessed with the Jackson 5, and she especially loves Michael. Were you thinking as you wrote about the way that we eventually learned about Michael Jackson would inflect those passages?</strong>
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FjkVcF">
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I wrote a book called <em>Sag Harbor</em> that dealt with <em>The Road Warrior</em> and Mel Gibson and Afrika Bambaataa, who was canceled for sexually abusing young people. <a href="https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/7/24/17460392/mel-gibson-comeback-metoo-times-up">Mel Gibson</a>, of course, is a horrible anti-Semite and racist. And there’s also a section on Bill Cosby and the Cosby family of the ’80s. I feel like a poison touch when I deal with pop culture, all that stuff that happened after I wrote the book.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0z99nC">
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In this case, I knew Michael Jackson’s history does overlap with the themes of the book. There’s this hidden corruption underneath. Everything looks legit, but of course, we know what’s gonna happen later on, what he’s gonna do.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CjA0C2">
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It’s the same way that I open with Radio Row in <em>Harlem Shuffle</em>. It’s a neighborhood that was destroyed to make way for the World Trade Center, creating this crater. Then the World Trade Center goes up. There’s another crater. And then we have the Freedom Tower. We have the perspective of reading it in the early 21st century, so we know all that hidden history of these things that the characters aren’t aware of.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ZMguxJ">
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<strong>And then we also have the bicentennial, which looms over the third section. Carney finds himself reacting to that very cynically and keeps trying to figure out how he can keep that view out of public consumption. So how did you decide the bicentennial would become a set piece? Did you know as soon as you were dealing with the ’70s that would have to?</strong>
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7gfT2T">
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I’m trying to find moments that speak to the themes of the book. The blackout of 1977 seems a good opportunity. It’s almost too obvious. So I sort of avoided that. But 1976, our bicentennial, is a good place to talk about how we don’t necessarily, in our actions, live up to our ideals. There’s a corruption there in the American ideal because we let down the Declaration. So it’s a moment of ironic commentary in very different ways for Ray.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="tkdWrM">
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There’s a Frederick Douglass speech, “<a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h2927.html">What is the Fourth of July to a slave</a>,” and every year on <a href="https://www.vox.com/twitter">Twitter</a>, someone retweets that and it’s like, “Yes.” What does the bicentennial mean for Black citizens? It was true in Frederick Douglass’s time, and we have that question now.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SQYKzK">
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<strong>You talked a little bit earlier about how the book is united through the motif and the theme of fire, which was sort of interesting for a crime novel. </strong><em><strong>Harlem Shuffle</strong></em><strong> is a heist novel. There’s lots and lots of heist novels out there. You kind of have a set of tropes. But there’s really not as many arson books out there that offer tropes to play with. So did you turn to any other crime novels or movies to see how other people have written about arson?</strong>
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="5wowwn">
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It’s always good when you’re the first person. There aren’t a lot of crime novels about fences [who sell stolen goods]. They’re a lot of stories where our heroes, or antiheroes, have stolen $2 million in jewels and they’re being pursued by the police. Half of them are dead. And then they bring their ill-gotten gains to the fence, who says, “I’ll give you 10 cents on the dollar.” I always found that figure appalling, and then I thought, “Who was that person?” These sort of underserved supporting characters are an opportunity for me, in terms of storytelling.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Cb9Yc0">
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Of course, municipal corruption is a big thing in nonfiction and movies and I always found that investigation very attractive. I think <em>Chinatown</em> is the most accessible example. On one level, there’s a simple crime, but behind that is the whole citywide corruption. That is a common noir theme.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wuYPZp">
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<strong>It was interesting to notice a shift in perspective between these two books.</strong><em><strong> Harlem Shuffle</strong></em><strong> is in Carney’s mind pretty much the whole way through. I think there’s a few jumps out. But in </strong><em><strong>Crook Manifesto</strong></em><strong> there are whole sections that are from the points of view of other characters. How did you come to the conclusion that you would have to shift narrative modes between these two books?</strong>
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="e5s8HD">
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The story allows or prohibits those kinds of shifts. In <em>Harlem Shuffle</em>, I may go to somebody’s POV for a couple of pages. Pepper [a career criminal and Carney’s occasional ally] gets a section here and there. In this book, he gets his own full-story novella, and Carney’s on the sidelines. The canvas gets bigger. I’ve got more opportunities as a storyteller to explore different perspectives.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Sc8H7u">
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One thing is, I love Pepper. Once he appeared in the first book, I had a strong feeling he’d get his own story. He has a different perspective on crime, on city, on family. He’s a loner. So what does he see when he interacts with Carney and Elizabeth [Carney’s wife] and the kids? Carney has one idea about the criminal activities conducted, and of course Pepper, being a pro, has a more mature and idiosyncratic perspective.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="glaKl5">
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It was fun and a great storytelling opportunity to give Pepper his due. And also to bring back people like Zippo, who’s a minor character in the first book and becomes a driving force of some of the action in the second book. We get to know him more.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gTtYZg">
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I knew, when I finished <em>Harlem Shuffle</em>, that I would write a second one. I was able to plot some of the second book into the third book and put in clues or set up things in <em>Harlem Shuffle</em>. So Alexander Oakes is mentioned in passing in the first book and becomes a major player in this book. It’s a big city. I try to populate it. There are corners that Carney can’t see, and that becomes an opportunity for me.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ldd0e2">
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<strong>Pepper’s novella is the second section of the book, which takes place largely on the set of a blaxploitation movie. A lot of the details in that section are so fun and feel very grounded in the experience of having watched what happens on a movie set. Was any of that drawn from your experience of watching </strong><em><strong>Underground Railroad</strong></em><strong> be adapted?</strong>
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1ks2YF">
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Not <em>Underground</em>, but I’ve had friends who have done low-budget movies, so I’ve been on a set a few times. But it’s really informed by loving those movies as a kid. There weren’t a lot of Black-oriented movies in the ’70s. The ones that came out were blaxploitation movies, and I gravitated toward them. In my early 20s I was a critic, and I was often writing about Black imagery and pop culture. I would go back to those movies as a 20-something and analyze them, and now I come to them in my 50s as a novelist.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PETr6b">
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How can a crime movie comment on criminal activity, like my fictional criminal activity? We have actors who are playing criminals who get caught up in a real-life criminal scheme. So it’s all that sort of nice play that was sort of delightful for me to fool around with.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="mapbT4">
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||
We have Lucinda Cole, who’s a rising star in the ’60s. We see her in the ’70s and her career hasn’t gone that well. There’s this injustice in the film industry. A character who seems to be on the way up is going to be brought down by institutional failures.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9ed0jx">
|
||
It’s fun also because Pepper is such a weirdo and his perspective on humans provides a lot of humor, but also, hopefully, touches on some other themes in the book.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="xwwgMo">
|
||
<strong>You’ve said that you tend to think of your projects as alternating fun books and heavier books. Do you imagine that after this trilogy, you’ll be picking up something darker, or do you think you’ll keep going on a fun streak for a while?</strong>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="kPzXev">
|
||
The novel I have planned once my schedule is clear has some jokes but also kind of a downer. So maybe in my age, I’m going to integrate those separate ideas of the light and the dark. We’ll see if I pull the trigger on that one once I’m done with the trilogy.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="r115SQ">
|
||
<strong>And is there anything you can share about the final volume of the trilogy?</strong>
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="r8z3yv">
|
||
It’s in the 1980s, so: Ed Koch. I’m still in the early pages but he’s appearing.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="0o2BQh">
|
||
I’m picking my spots for Carney and for Pepper, and ways to talk about the evolving city. What happens after the fiscal crisis is over, what other crises loom large. New York is a great big complicated place and it’s providing a lot of great material.
|
||
</p></li>
|
||
<li><strong>Telephone operation was a good career for women. Then it got automated.</strong> -
|
||
<figure>
|
||
<img alt="A black-and-white photo shows a row of young women in 1940s fashion working at a telephone switchboard." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Mp68SA2k7RFd0MLcDFcvYD3Tv8A=/0x0:4948x3711/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72461344/1031557866.0.jpg"/>
|
||
<figcaption>
|
||
Bell Telephone Company of Pennsylvania operators in 1945. By that point, the process of automating telephone operation was well underway. | Bell Telephone Company of Pennsylvania/Federal Communications Commission/PhotoQuest/Getty Images
|
||
</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
How automation wiped out a whole career for young women — and how young women adapted.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="9137rh">
|
||
If you were a young (white) woman looking for work in the early 1920s, you could do worse than becoming a telephone operator.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="pc0jOu">
|
||
In the early 1920s, AT&T, the telephone monopoly that grew out of Alexander Graham Bell’s Bell Telephone, was <a href="https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w29580/w29580.pdf#page=3">America’s largest employer</a>, and specifically employed many women as operators, who manually connected callers by plugging wires into inputs on switchboards. In 1929, when employment peaked in the last months before the Great Depression, a <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41861181">government report</a> estimated the number of operators working for AT&T at 161,669.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CaESSn">
|
||
The company <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/race-on-the-line">refused to hire Black operators</a> until 1944, immigrants rarely got hired, and some exchanges barred Jewish women too. But for white, gentile, American-born women, especially young and unmarried women (as women often left the labor force after marriage, and married women faced discrimination in hiring), connecting calls at the switchboard was a common way to make a living.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="hoaFCk">
|
||
“In 1920, telephone operators were roughly 2 percent of the US female workforce and 4 percent of nearly three million young, white, American-born working women,” economists James Feigenbaum and Daniel Gross <a href="https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w28061/w28061.pdf">observe</a>. “As much as 15 percent of cohorts born at the turn of the century might have <em>ever</em> been an operator.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SEFvKt">
|
||
Then it all went away. In the 1920s, as telephone coverage was expanding and the ranks of operators were growing, AT&T began to roll out a “mechanical switching” system in which people would manually dial other numbers from their home, using a rotary system. Human operators were no longer needed. The profession took decades to die out completely, as AT&T switched gradually, exchange by exchange. But eventually, automation killed off the telephone operator as a profession, by around 1978.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="W7dwLi">
|
||
That’s what made telephone operators so interesting to Feigenbaum and Gross, two economic historians who wanted to examine a clear case where automation led to an entire job class being automated away.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="eb3dgC">
|
||
For existing operators, they find that automation had real costs. Operators in a city that transitioned to mechanical switching were substantially less likely to have any job 10 years later than operators in cities that were slower to automate; those that did find work tended to find worse, lower-paying jobs.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Ig7X9F">
|
||
But Feigenbaum and Gross also examine the results for young white women coming of age during automation, who just a few years earlier would’ve been ideal candidates for telephone operator jobs. Remarkably, they find little or no negative effects at all: they were just as likely to find work as they would have been before, and job openings in fields like secretarial work and restaurants increased even as telephone operation was automated away. Some of those jobs (like restaurant work) paid less, but others were competitive with telephone operation.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="WNu0wr">
|
||
This is just one case, and economists have a long way to go in understanding how automation affects workers — a question that is more important than ever with the rapid progress in AI. But telephone operation appears like a mostly heartening example. Even though a job that once employed 2 percent of all working women was automated away, new workers entering the labor market were not significantly worse off.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<h3 id="E76Gda">
|
||
The curious case of the completely automated job
|
||
</h3>
|
||
<figure class="e-image">
|
||
<img alt="In a black-and-white photo, a uniformed elevator operator closes the door for his two passengers, a sheep and a goose. " src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/lccprxRqjGRJSbsFz49PEYa0Trc=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24793363/514685668.jpg"/> <cite>Bettmann Archive/Getty Images</cite>
|
||
<figcaption>
|
||
An elevator operator carries a sheep and a goose in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City, circa 1930. This is what happens when you search a photo archive for “elevator operator.”
|
||
</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="86wJre">
|
||
Of course, automation leading to job losses in a particular job category or whole sector of the economy is pretty common. As websites like Expedia and Kayak and Google Flights emerged, the <a href="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LEU0254497900A">number of travel agents</a> in the US fell from 100,000 in 2000 to 45,000 last year, even as the <a href="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LFWA64TTUSM647S">working population</a> grew by 29 million people. From 1948 to 2019, a recent <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2022/october/u-s-agricultural-output-has-grown-slower-in-response-to-stagnant-productivity-growth/#:~:text=According%20to%20recent%20data%2C%20U.S.,of%200.06%20percent%20a%20year.">Department of Agriculture report</a> found, the amount of labor on US farms fell by 74 percent, while the <em>output </em>of those farms grew by 175 percent. We grew nearly three times as much food<strong> </strong>with a quarter of the labor because of <a href="https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/44197/13566_eib3_1_.pdf">intensive investment</a> in advanced combine harvesters, fertilizers, and other innovations.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="CbK1Wk">
|
||
But that didn’t eliminate the need for farm workers, and travel agents still exist (in fact, the Bureau of Labor Statistics <a href="https://www.bls.gov/ooh/sales/travel-agents.htm#tab-6">expects the number of travel agents to grow rapidly</a> in the next decade as part of the travel industry’s overall recovery from Covid). It’s pretty rare for a job to be fully automated out of existence the way telephone operators were. The economist James Bessen, for instance, has <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2690435">argued</a> that since 1950, only one job (elevator operators) has ever been fully automated away. The Bureau of Labor Statistics still estimates <a href="https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes432021.htm">some 4,000 people</a> working as telephone operators, though their work is highly specialized and very different from that of early 20th-century women on switchboards who saw their jobs swept away.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="EfzBYt">
|
||
“Jobs are bundles of tasks,” Gross told me. “We had a job that was defined by one task: call-switching. … Part of why there aren’t as many examples of entire categories being eviscerated is that most jobs have workers doing multiple things.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="hym97F">
|
||
My job as a reporter, for instance, can be divvied up into many individual tasks: scheduling calls with sources, conducting interviews, transcribing those interviews, conducting online research and reading past coverage and academic papers, collating all of the above into a final article. Even if one of those tasks is automated (as transcription largely has been in recent years), the rest remain. Most jobs, from janitorial labor to factory assembly to medicine and law, are like this: complex combinations of discrete tasks, and the job itself doesn’t vanish if one task is automated.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="REsjQR">
|
||
The technology to automate call-switching <a href="https://patents.google.com/patent/US492850A/en">emerged in the 1890s</a>, only 16 years after <a href="https://www.loc.gov/everyday-mysteries/technology/item/who-is-credited-with-inventing-the-telephone/">Bell’s invention of the telephone</a>. Almon Strowger, an undertaker in Kansas City, Missouri, developed the so-called “Strowger switch,” the first electric system for connecting phone lines without a human operator.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1OONJa">
|
||
A possibly apocryphal but extremely funny <a href="https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/strowger-switch-purple-reign-redux/transcript/">origin story</a> alleges that Strowger was inspired to invent his switch because he thought the operator at the local telephone exchange, who was married to a rival undertaker, was conspiring to divert calls from bereaved families to her husband instead of Strowger. I haven’t been able to source this to anything other than a series of poorly footnoted books and articles but I like the anecdote too much to leave it out. It also seems to fit later anecdotes from people who knew Strowger and <a href="https://www.newspapers.com/article/111684614/the-automatic-phone-sprang-from-a-collar/">attested to his … difficult … temperament</a>.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ZWMBGr">
|
||
In any case, switching failed to take off in the 1890s. It didn’t offer clear cost savings over human operators, and it produced more errors. It wasn’t until 1917, Feigenbaum and Gross note in a <a href="https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w29580/w29580.pdf">companion paper</a>, that “mechanical switching could match manual operation on connection times and error rates, and internal estimates suggested it may generate savings in large cities.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="WCcqrp">
|
||
A major factor was the exponentially rising complexity of telephone networks as more and more people got phone lines in their homes and workplaces. “It only takes 50,000 subscribers to have a billion possible pairwise connections,” Gross said. “Adding a 50,001st subscriber adds another 50,000 potential connections. Having the mechanisms to connect that many different people manually is incredibly costly and complicated.” While human operators had managed this complexity for a few decades, it beggared belief that they could handle a country where every home had a phone.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="L8g8Hr">
|
||
Automation proceeded in stages, city by city, and with important limits. Initially more complex tasks, like long-distance switching, were reserved for human operators even in cities that transitioned to mechanical switching. The Great Depression slowed investment in mechanical switching systems, as did restrictions on non-military uses of copper imposed during World War II. (Copper was the main material for phone lines). The full transition to mechanized call switching only ended in 1978, Feigenbaum and Gross observe, at which point computerized switching systems far more complex than anything Almon Strowger imagined were beginning to be implemented.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="UMeMaz">
|
||
The staggered rollout is a godsend for economists: they let Feigenbaum and Gross compare employment outcomes for young white women before and after AT&T transitioned to mechanical operation in a given city, and by combining these before/after comparisons in the 261 different cities they examine through 1940, and roughly 2,500 additional cities which were not yet converted to mechanical service, they can estimate an average effect of the transition.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<h3 id="nWi1Wg">
|
||
What automation did to existing telephone operators — and those who would’ve taken their place
|
||
</h3>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="6kSfcw">
|
||
Transitions to mechanical switching led, unsurprisingly, to a dramatic reduction in the share of young, white, US-born women working as operators: in cities instituting the change, the share fell <a href="https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w28061/w28061.pdf">by 1.7 percentage points</a>, which is a huge change given that on average 3.9 percent of this group was working in telephone operation before automation.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="12njQz">
|
||
Operating was a relatively high-turnover job; among operators in cities that didn’t transition to mechanical switching, only 24 percent were still operators 10 years later. But the share was even lower in cities that automated: only 16 percent stayed in the field (presumably moving to cities or exchanges that hadn’t yet been automated). A large share of operators who dropped out of the profession post-automation didn’t find other work at all. Older operators (meaning those who were over 25 when automation occurred) were 7 percentage points less likely to be working, which Feigenbaum and Gross note accounts for “more than half of the displacement of operators in this age group.” They had no future in telephones, and most of them got booted out of the labor force entirely.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PluOTA">
|
||
Those who kept working tended to get worse jobs. About 10 percent of operators exposed to automation were in a lower-paying profession a decade later, compared to only 1 percent of operators not exposed to automation.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="W1zuuF">
|
||
So that’s the bad news: getting hit head-on by a wave of automation had serious negative effects on these women. But what about women coming of age in the 1930s who might have earlier been telephone operators? Were they worse off for lacking this job opportunity? Surprisingly, Feigenbaum and Gross find the answer is no.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="zJZ4wo">
|
||
“We find no effects on the fraction of young women working, in school, married, or with children for any group,” they conclude. This is true even after they narrow their analysis to white, American-born women, and down to relatively narrow age bands (16 to 20, say, or 21 to 25). What appears to have happened is that other professions open to young women with just a high school diploma saw job opportunities increase as those in telephone operation were shrinking. Secretarial work, for instance, boomed, as did restaurant work.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="YyMfj6">
|
||
“This is the era of the drugstore lunch counter, the soda fountain,” Gross says. “There’s growing demand in this broad line of work in new places.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<figure class="e-image">
|
||
<img alt="A bunch of hep teens in the 1950s hang out at a soda fountain" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/FHikLrT9QzjMx5K0fqkrbhYYpTI=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24793376/GettyImages_563937513.jpg"/> <cite>H. Armstrong Roberts/ClassicStock/Getty Images</cite>
|
||
<figcaption>
|
||
Telephone operator jobs gave way to more modern careers, like working at a soda fountain.
|
||
</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="r8nxb1">
|
||
The idea that demand for young women in the workforce surged in these industries exactly enough to offset the jobs lost to automation in telephony seemed almost magical to me. It’s such a neat story, and a such hopeful one for automation generally.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="VpJ5d9">
|
||
One possible story is that the spread of the telephone, enabled by automated switching, led to increased productivity elsewhere in the economy which enabled more hiring in positions like secretarial labor. Secretaries spend a lot of time on the phone, after all. That’s not what seems to have happened, though. “We don’t really think there are any kind of direct productivity impacts of the technology outside of AT&T itself,” Gross says. “If there are, they’re minuscule, too small to explain these effects.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="eki8Z6">
|
||
So what <em>did</em> happen? The closest thing to an answer we have is that the overall economy adapted. Moving to mechanical switches didn’t reduce the total amount of spending in the economy. The money that used to pay operators’ salaries, the money AT&T made from telephone bills and then spent on wages, was still there, and it went to <em>something</em>. Moreover, the presence of a sudden glut of young women available to work gave businesses a reason to try out what Feigenbaum and Gross call “organizational innovations”: new ways to structure their firm to make use of these female workers. Around this time, doctors and hospitals had begun hiring “medical stenographers” to take down symptoms and other information from patients, in person or via phone. None of the tech behind that job was new, but the availability of young women to do it <em>was</em> new.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="BrZNa1">
|
||
“There’s a time dimension that’s really important,” Feigenbaum says. “If you’re an incumbent worker, the technology shock is bad for you. If you’re a future worker, you have time to adjust.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="55EupN">
|
||
Feigenbaum and Gross are hesitant to draw overly broad conclusions from this work for the whole economy. “We’d need to study 10 more, 100 more automation events to really know how, this phenomenon operates,” Feigenbaum says. “Are there some cases where the other jobs are <em>not</em> growing at the same time?” It’s possible. We just don’t know.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Jbftwn">
|
||
But the ability of the next generation of female workers to adapt to the telephone automation shock gives me some hope as we face a new wave of automation led by AI. Of course, sufficiently general AI threatens to automate vast swathes of tasks at once, quite quickly, without giving us much time to transition. If that happens, rapid job loss seems inevitable. But it hasn’t happened so far, and smaller shocks like mechanical telephone operation seem more common.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="LucjtF">
|
||
The telephone operators’ example gives me some reason to think the next generation of would-be <a href="https://www.axios.com/2022/03/28/automation-long-haul-truckers-jobs">truck drivers</a>, or <a href="https://medicalfuturist.com/the-future-of-radiology-and-ai/">radiologists</a>, will be able to sort into new work. And maybe, if we’re lucky, we can avoid existing drivers getting hurt the way existing telephone operators were.
|
||
</p></li>
|
||
<li><strong>You’re going to see more AI-written articles whether you like it or not</strong> -
|
||
<figure>
|
||
<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/lupQiR2HTcIu2g1F7F5RGBYaFn4=/222x0:4302x3060/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72461305/1241463939.0.jpg"/>
|
||
<figcaption>
|
||
G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller at a 2022 conference. | Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile for Collision via Getty Images
|
||
</figcaption>
|
||
</figure>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
Why G/O Media thinks we should have more stories written by bots.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="XzeLwN">
|
||
In early July, managers at G/O media, the digital publisher that owns sites like <a href="https://gizmodo.com/">Gizmodo</a>, the <a href="https://www.theonion.com/">Onion</a>, and <a href="https://jezebel.com/">Jezebel</a>, published four stories that had been almost entirely generated by <a href="https://www.vox.com/2023/4/28/23702644/artificial-intelligence-machine-learning-technology">AI</a> engines. The stories — which included multiple errors and which ran without input from G/O’s editors or writers — <a href="https://twitter.com/gmgunion/status/1676705007201075201">infuriated</a> G/O staff and generated <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/07/08/gizmodo-ai-errors-star-wars/">scorn</a> in media circles.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Jauqnh">
|
||
They should get used to it.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2E3asg">
|
||
G/O executives, who say that AI-produced stories are part of a larger experiment with the technology, plan on creating more of them soon, according to an internal memo. And G/O managers told me they — and everyone else in media — <em>should</em> be learning how to make machine-generated content.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="8bZh4d">
|
||
“It is absolutely a thing we want to do more of,” says Merrill Brown, G/O’s editorial director.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="TYcL0t">
|
||
G/O’s continued embrace of AI-written stories puts the company at odds with most conventional publishers, who generally say they’re interested in using AI to help them produce content but aren’t— for now — interested in making stuff that is almost 100 percent machine-made.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="uDM9YN">
|
||
But it’s easy to see a future where publishers looking at replacing humans increasingly rely on this tech. Or, if you’d like a less dystopian projection, a future where publishers use <a href="https://www.vox.com/robots">robots</a> to churn out low-cost, low-value stuff while human journalists are reserved for more interesting work.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<aside id="9yTJt3">
|
||
<div>
|
||
|
||
</div>
|
||
</aside>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="t8l9Mj">
|
||
In a note sent to top editors at his company last Friday, Brown said that editors of <a href="https://jalopnik.com/">Jalopnik</a>, a car-focused site, and the pop-culture site <a href="https://www.avclub.com/">A.V. Club</a> are planning to create “content summaries or lists that will be produced by A.I.” Brown’s memo also notes that the <a href="https://www.ap.org/press-releases/2023/ap-open-ai-agree-to-share-select-news-content-and-technology-in-new-collaboration">Associated Press recently announced a partnership with OpenAI</a>, the buzzy AI company that created ChatGPT.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="U68PQk">
|
||
A different internal G/O note, produced earlier this month, calls for “2-3 quality stories” made by AI to run on Jalopnik and the A.V. Club on July 21. Brown told Vox that document, published after the first set of machine-generated stories ran — and which notes that AI engines “alone (currently) are not factually reliable/consistent” and will need human assistance — “has nothing whatsoever to do with publishing or editorial deadlines.“
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Qw4jSq">
|
||
But Brown and G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller both argue that AI will be transformative for <a href="https://www.vox.com/media">the media</a> industry — like the internet was in the last couple decades, or maybe more so — and that ignoring it would be a terrible mistake.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="2O9Ouc">
|
||
“I think it would be irresponsible to not be testing it,” Spanfeller told me.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="PXGPLJ">
|
||
Spanfeller and Brown say their AI-written stories aren’t the only way they want to use the tech. Like many publishers, they bring up the idea that reporters could use AI to do research for a story; Spanfeller also says he wants to use AI to automate some tasks humans currently perform on the business side of his company, like preparing basic marketing plans for advertisers.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="eHAjjO">
|
||
But G/O employees, who tell me they don’t want to talk on the record for fear they’ll be disciplined by managers, say they’ve received no information from their managers about any use of AI — except a heads-up that the AI-written stories were going to appear on the site on July 5, which was sent the same day the stories ran.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gkIpaD">
|
||
G/O journalists tell me they’re upset about the execution of the stories — <a href="https://gizmodo.com/a-chronological-list-of-star-wars-movies-tv-shows-1850592566">a bot-written item about how to watch all the Star Wars movies in chronological order</a> had errors, for instance — but even more so, the fact that they exist at all.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="HYHxRd">
|
||
“It’s a disaster for employee morale,” a G/O journalist told Vox.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="SQ10Du">
|
||
Brown now says the next round of stories will receive input from the top editors at each publication. “We won’t do another editorial project that I can possibly imagine, without an [editor-in-chief] overseeing and reviewing it,” he told me.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="ie8k9g">
|
||
Spanfeller and Brown also say they won’t use AI to replace G/O’s staff. “Our goal is to hire more journalists,” Spanfeller said. (Spanfeller notes that, like other media companies — including <a href="https://variety.com/2023/digital/news/vox-media-layoffs-130-employees-job-cuts-1235496467/">Vox Media, which owns this site</a> — <a href="https://twitter.com/OnionIncUnion/status/1669062355580231696">G/O has laid off employees</a> because of this “<a href="https://www.vox.com/recode/2022/9/28/23375164/advertising-slow-growth-economy-digital-facebook-apple-snap-peter-kafka-column">crappy economic market</a>” — but called it a “de minimis amount of reduction.”)
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="JCV9wb">
|
||
That argument doesn’t persuade G/O staff, who say they assume G/O will inevitably use the tech to replace them.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="7GpwyG">
|
||
“This is a not-so-veiled attempt to replace real journalism with machine-generated content,” another G/O journalist told me. “G/O’s MO is to make staff do more and more and publish more and more. It has never ceased to be that. This is a company that values quantity over quality.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="kDS6nY">
|
||
Other newsrooms that have tried out AI-generated stories have since pulled back. CNET, which generated headlines when it admitted that dozens of stories it published were machine-made (and full of errors), has since said it <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/6/23750761/cnet-ai-generated-stories-policy-update">won’t use made-from-scratch AI stories</a>. BuzzFeed, which briefly saw its stock shoot up when it announced its enthusiasm for AI earlier this year — and months later <a href="https://www.vox.com/technology/2023/4/20/23691852/buzzfeed-news-rip-digital-media-industry">shut down its entire BuzzFeed News operation</a> — produced an <a href="https://futurism.com/buzzfeed-publishing-articles-by-ai">embarrassing series of “travel guides”</a> that were almost entirely produced by AI. But a PR rep now says the company won’t make more of those.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="wd173W">
|
||
And while both Insider and Axios have said they are exploring using generative AI to help journalists do their work, executives at both publications say they won’t use stories written entirely by bots. At the moment, at least.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Pft4nO">
|
||
“Definitely looking at every aspect of AI augmenting our work but don’t see any upside in wholly AI-generated content right now,” Axios editor-in-chief Jim VandeHei wrote in an email to Vox. “Seems like all danger, no upside until A LOT more is known.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="J4i4vA">
|
||
But there’s definitely at least one upside to machine-made content: It costs next to nothing. And it’s worth noting that there are many, many outlets publishing stories, written by actual humans, that promise to tell you, as the Gizmodo AI story did, how to watch <a href="https://www.vox.com/star-wars">Star Wars</a> movies in order. Among them: <a href="https://www.space.com/star-wars-movies-in-order">Space.com</a>, <a href="https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/guide/star-wars-movies-in-order/">Rotten Tomatoes</a>, <a href="https://www.rd.com/article/star-wars-movies-order/">Reader’s Digest</a>, <a href="https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/how-to-watch-the-star-wars-movies-in-order">PC Magazine</a>, <a href="https://www.thewrap.com/star-wars-movies-in-order-how-to-watch/">the Wrap</a>, and <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/07/star-wars-movies-in-order">Vanity Fair</a>.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gYJ1Nj">
|
||
And for at least a few days, <a href="https://www.vox.com/google">Google</a> ranked Gizmodo’s machine-made output among the top results for “star wars movies” queries. That’s something Brown noted when he told me that he’s learned that AI content “will, at least for the moment, be well-received by search engines.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="gagmhq">
|
||
Which points out both the appeal and the limitations of this kind of stuff: There’s <em>some</em> audience for it. And Google — for now — will steer people to sites that make it, which translates to page views and at least the potential for ad revenue.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="FdohNu">
|
||
But making the exact same content producible by dozens of other people — or an unlimited number of robots — doesn’t build long-term value for your publication. And whatever financial return you earn will keep shrinking as more people and bots make the same thing, creating more competition and pushing ad prices down. (Unless, of course, Google decides that it’s better off not sending people away from its results page at all — like it now does for “<a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=what+time+is+the+super+bowl&oq=what+ti&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j69i57j35i39i650j0i457i512j0i402i512j0i402i650j69i60l2.931j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8">What time is the Super Bowl</a>” results.)
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="bRSnMU">
|
||
It’s also worth noting that the Gizmodo machine-made stories have since fallen way down on the Google rankings (perhaps because of the <a href="https://futurism.com/gizmodo-ai-star-wars-article-google">scrutiny</a> those search results generated).
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="1EjhER">
|
||
Years ago, I worked for Spanfeller when he was the publisher of Forbes.com, where he also produced a lot of content that wasn’t created by his employees, like republished stories from news wires, consultancies, and other outside sources. Spanfeller estimates that his staff produced around 200 stories each day but that Forbes.com published around 5,000 items.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="j2Izt1">
|
||
And back then, Spanfeller said, the staff-produced stories generated 85 to 90 percent of the site’s page views. The other stuff wasn’t valueless. Just not that valuable.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="Kf2Iqe">
|
||
Spanfeller says he thinks that could play out again with AI stories, imagining a scenario where “there’s value to the site, there’s value to the end user for AI-generated content — whatever that means.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom" id="oFNHCs">
|
||
But he says the stuff the humans on his staff do will be much more valuable than the work the robots do. “I don’t think this is an existential moment for journalism.”
|
||
</p></li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-sports">From The Hindu: Sports</h1>
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>WFI ad-hoc panel hands direct Asian Games entries to Bajrang Punia, Vinesh Phogat, raises eyebrows</strong> - The IOA ad-hoc panel said in a circular that it has already selected wrestler in men’s freestyle 65kg and women’s 53kg but trials will be held in all six weight categories in each of the three styles</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ramiel, Shamrock, River Of Gold, Angeles, Polished Girl and The King N I excelled</strong> -</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Joaquin, Esperanza and Golden Neil pleased</strong> -</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Cummins more of old fashioned Test captain, Stokes tries to make something happen every ball: Ponting</strong> - Australia lead the series 2-1 heading into the fourth Test starting in Manchester on Wednesday</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>West Indies announce squad for 2nd Test against India, add uncapped spinner</strong> - Sinclair’s inclusion provides captain Kraigg Brathwaite with an additional bowling option and the opportunity for a Test debut alongside fellow spinner Rahkeem Cornwall at Queen’s Park Oval</p></li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-the-hindu-national-news">From The Hindu: National News</h1>
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>BRS Govt. has the habit of targeting properties of Oppn leaders: Ponguleti</strong> -</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Oomen Chandy’s passing leaves Congress bereft</strong> -</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>26 Opposition parties’ joint resolution pitches for conducting caste census</strong> - In their Samuhik Sankalp (joint resolution) released after the meeting, the parties expressed their steadfast resolve to safeguard the idea of India as enshrined in the Constitution</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Here are the big stories from Karnataka today</strong> - Welcome to the Karnataka Today newsletter, your guide from The Hindu on the major news stories to follow today. Curated and written by Nalme Nachiyar.</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Oratorical contest to mark World Day for International Justice held</strong> -</p></li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-bbc-europe">From BBC: Europe</h1>
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ukraine war: Russia says Crimean bridge partially open to cars again</strong> - Moscow accuses Ukraine of attacking its huge sea bridge with drones, killing two people.</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Ukraine war: No fast results in offensive, warns Ukraine’s General Syrskyi</strong> - Gen Syrskyi, overseeing the renewed push in the east, says quick success is practically impossible.</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>VanMoof: E-bike firm goes bust after Covid boom</strong> - The brothers who founded the Dutch electric bike-maker said they were unable to save the firm.</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Heatwave: BBC correspondents on how people are coping</strong> - Climate change means places like Murcia in Spain and Phoenix, Arizona are only getting hotter.</p></li>
|
||
<li data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Illegal Migration Bill: Government sees off final Lords challenge</strong> - The bill is central to the prime minister’s pledge to stop small boats crossing the English Channel.</p></li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-ars-technica">From Ars Technica</h1>
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>For the first time in 51 years, NASA is training astronauts to fly to the Moon</strong> - “They’ve got a great adventure ahead of them.” - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1954616">link</a></p></li>
|
||
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Corsair is buying DIY mechanical keyboard brand Drop</strong> - Drop claims enthusiast roots will remain but product availability could improve. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1954545">link</a></p></li>
|
||
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>When will we see Apple’s 3 nm M3? Let’s sort through conflicting rumors</strong> - New products are sure to come as soon as October, but details are fuzzy. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1954417">link</a></p></li>
|
||
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Aspartame and cancer: Why you really shouldn’t worry about this</strong> - The FDA said bluntly that it disagrees with the WHO’s carcinogen classification. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1954575">link</a></p></li>
|
||
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>AT&T stock fell to 29-year low on Friday and sank another 6.7% today</strong> - AT&T, Verizon, Frontier, and Lumen all get hammered after lead-cable reports. - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1954536">link</a></p></li>
|
||
</ul>
|
||
<h1 data-aos="fade-right" id="from-jokes-subreddit">From Jokes Subreddit</h1>
|
||
<ul>
|
||
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>I asked my girlfriend to describe me in 5 words. She said I’m mature, I’m moral, I’m pure, I’m polite and I’m perfect! Then she added that I..</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
|
||
<div class="md">
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
…also had a fundamental lack of understanding about apostrophes and spaces.
|
||
</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<!-- SC_ON -->
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/HelpingHandsUs"> /u/HelpingHandsUs </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/152g1nx/i_asked_my_girlfriend_to_describe_me_in_5_words/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/152g1nx/i_asked_my_girlfriend_to_describe_me_in_5_words/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
|
||
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Three writers, Al, Ben, and Carl, who were attending a writing convention, booked a 3 bedroom suite on the 75th floor of a hotel.</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
|
||
<div class="md">
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
When they arrived back at the hotel from the convention, the receptionist told them, “I’m terribly sorry, but all the elevators are broken. In the meantime, you will have to take the stairs.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
Now, Al was a writer of funny stories, Ben was a writer of scary stories, and Carl was a writer of sad stories. The three of them agreed that, to make it less boring, Al would tell the other two his funniest stories while they climbed from floors 1 to 25, Ben would tell his scariest stories from floors 26 to 50, and Carl would tell his saddest stories from floors 51 to 75.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
They started to climb the stairs, and Al started to tell funny stories. By the time they reached the 25th floor, Ben and Carl were laughing hysterically.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
Then Ben started to tell scary stories. By the time they reached the 50th floor, Al and Carl were hugging each other in fear.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
Then Carl started to tell sad stories. “I’ll tell my saddest story of all first,” he said. “There once was a man named Carl who left the hotel room key in the car…”
|
||
</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<!-- SC_ON -->
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Make_the_music_stop"> /u/Make_the_music_stop </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/152vvc5/three_writers_al_ben_and_carl_who_were_attending/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/152vvc5/three_writers_al_ben_and_carl_who_were_attending/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
|
||
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>Two Indians are walking beside a river…</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
|
||
<div class="md">
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
One reaches down into the mud and runs it through his fingers.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
“The White Man was here.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
“How can you tell?”
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
“We’re speaking English.”
|
||
</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<!-- SC_ON -->
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/The_Safe_For_Work"> /u/The_Safe_For_Work </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/152a03c/two_indians_are_walking_beside_a_river/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/152a03c/two_indians_are_walking_beside_a_river/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
|
||
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>What are the three words you never want to hear while having sex?</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
|
||
<div class="md">
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
“Honey, I’m home!”
|
||
</p>
|
||
</div>
|
||
<!-- SC_ON -->
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/Yorkie_Mom_2"> /u/Yorkie_Mom_2 </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/152m6k1/what_are_the_three_words_you_never_want_to_hear/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/152m6k1/what_are_the_three_words_you_never_want_to_hear/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
|
||
<li><p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"><strong>A rich old man is on his deathbed…</strong> - <!-- SC_OFF --></p>
|
||
<div class="md">
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
||
…but he does not have any heirs. But he has three good friends - a teacher, a doctor, and a lawyer.
|
||
</p>
|
||
<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
|
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He calls them by his side and tells them, “I am dying. I wish to be buried with half my wealth. I will now give you $5 million each and you should bury half of that with my casket when I die.”
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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All three agreed and soon the man died. On the day of the funeral, all three attended. Then it came time to bury the casket.
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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The teacher said, “I’m sorry. I saw all the poor children who can’t afford to go to school so I built a school for them. I don’t have any money left to bury.”
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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The doctor said, “I’m also sorry. I saw all the poor sick people and built a hospital for them and I don’t have any money left.”
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</p>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom">
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The lawyer said, “What kind of friends are you if you can’t even honour his dying wish!” and then placed a cheque for $2.5 million on the casket.
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</p>
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</div>
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<p data-aos="fade-left" data-aos-anchor-placement="bottom-bottom"> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/CodingBuizel"> /u/CodingBuizel </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/152ormz/a_rich_old_man_is_on_his_deathbed/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/152ormz/a_rich_old_man_is_on_his_deathbed/">[comments]</a></span></p></li>
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