This is the Kator Daily Podcast for Thursday, May 9th, 2024. I'm Caleb Brown.

As newspapers continue that slow, steady decline in the U.S.

What are some bright spots for local journalism?

Cato's Paul Matzko believes that generative AI holds promise to help us access

cheaply the events in our local communities and he believes

some early signs of the disruption to current models of news gathering, advertising

and payment is well underway.

Have you ever worked in the news media, Paul Matzco? No other than bringing the odd editorial now and again.

Radio.

Oh, have I ever worked in radio?

No, I mean unless you count podcasting as radio adjacent, no.

Never been in a... I do not, sir. Having worked in

radio for decades, I do not count podcasting as radio. One is not live and

two it is not a terrestrial broadcast. So newspapers are on the downswing and I would say most of

that is driven by technology. But if newspapers wanted to function better in our current age, what might that look like?

Well, I think we already have some kind of, let's say, weak signals that point us towards a future where we don't associate the words

local news with death and dying and disaster. And those weak signals are the way in which new AI tools, we don't always call AI, we sometimes use phrases like the algorithm, but algorithmic tools can actually help, I think, forward-thinking news startups, newspaper news outlets to

innovate and to rethink what it means to deliver news to consumers.

I was at my local city council meeting recently. I'm pretty sure I was the only

human being there who either did not work at the local paper or did not have a report to deliver to the city council about their particular area of

government and that was a little upsetting to me, and I also imagine that even in a small town with AI tools, that a city council meeting could be covered fairly well.

Yeah, well, I mean, the data backs us up over the last five years.

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