The Journalism Jobs AI Will Kill First

On this week’s podcast, I chat with Olivia Messer, Editor-in-Chief of new media organization The Barbed Wire.We start where all good reporting careers used to begin: at the local level. Olivia cut her teeth at the Waco Tribune-Herald, a paper over a century old, where she covered everything from stabbings to car accidents. She makes a compelling case for why these stories — and the sheer number of them cub reporters cover — are the most important part of a journalist’s education. In her view, it is far better to make your inevitable mistakes at a local paper than on a national platform, yet those local training grounds are disappearing faster than we can replace them.Our conversation moves into the digital era and what she calls her “40,000 broken eggs” — the massive Twitter following she built and which she used to engage with readers, but which curdled when the platform shifted under Elon Musk.We chat about the philosophy behind The Barbed Wire (some latest stories include the shuttering of gender and sexuality programs at Texas Tech University and how Texas college students are helping thousands of undocumented classmates.) Running a next-generation media property, Olivia and her team are navigating a hybrid funding model that rejects the traditional paywall. She argues that if the correct information is stuck behind a wall while misinformation remains free, we’re never going to win the ‘how to educate people’ war.We also dive into the out-of-towner mistakes national reporters make when they parachute into Texas, often ignoring the fact that the state is the birthplace of many of the civil rights movements the rest of the country now takes for granted.Finally, we address the looming shadow of AI. Olivia explains why investigative reporting — the kind of deep-dive journalism that may require a source to trust you with something off the record — is something a robot will never be able to replicate.But there’s a flip side: AI could, she tells me, find those stories that have always been hiding in plain sight. For example, she thinks someone should build a tool that scrapes PACER, the federal government’s online database of US court records, and find all the lawsuits the rest of us are missing. The robots, it turns out, might have their uses after all.Here’s an excerpt from our conversation:Alex: You started out at the Waco Tribune-Herald. What did you cover?Olivia: “Stabbings, shootings, car accidents, inclement weather. I was like the house fire expert. And then I covered a string of dumpster fires that never got solved. Literal ones. I’m so grateful now that I got to make all my mistakes at the local level, because you have to make a certain number of mistakes in this job. And it’s better if you’re not on a national platform when it happens.”What advice would you give to someone graduating with a journalism degree today?“The answer has kind of never changed. It’s just that it’s only gotten harder and more competitive. If you want to be a journalist, you have to do journalism. That was the best advice I got — it doesn’t really matter where or how. I had roommates who were like, I’m only ever going to do it in New York. And I was like, good luck. And when I moved to Waco a lot of people in my life said: why would you do that? The real advice now is … you have to make yourself indispensable. Be the first there and the last to leave, and care about getting your stories, and triple-check things even when you don’t have a copy editor, and make it so that no one can imagine the newsroom working without you.”You built a huge Twitter following and then watched the platform change under Elon Musk. How did that feel?“I feel like it’s talking about eggs I have in a basket that are all broken. I have 40,000 broken eggs. There is no longer the same water cooler experience. I did a thread the other day on Twitter in reaction to some news, just trying to talk about how sexual misconduct investigations work. And the mentions were not a place I would want to hang out. Bluesky has figured some things out. I like Bluesky a lot. But it’s not like you could have one live event where everybody’s in the same room anymore, which is a real bummer, because that was a lovely experience.”How did The Barbed Wire come about?“Texas is just the most news-rich place. We have this huge, diverse, young population who’s not really subscribing to daily newspapers, who are kind of getting their news from TikTok. We could just cover immigration stories, or we could just cover news for the five million Black Texans who don’t have their own news outlet serving their community, or two million queer Texans, or 12 million Latino Texans. We were trying to fill a hole and speak to young, news-avoidant populations. Somebody called us Texas Monthly’s younger, edgier sibling. That’s kind of the vibe I’d like to inhabit.”What do people outside Texas get wrong about the state?“The number of people in Texas who voted for Biden was higher than the number of people in New York who voted for Biden. Texas has such a large population — and that population includes almost the most immigrants of any state, almost the most Latinos of any state, almost the most Black people of any state, almost the most queer people of any state, almost the most trans people of any state. The idea that Texas is this hellscape that is unfavorable to various populations is of course true. And also the sheer number of progressives who are fighting the good fight — or just journalists who are trying to inform people — or reasonable moderates, is much higher than people give it credit for. A lot of civil rights movements had to start here because here’s where they needed them the most.”What can AI never replace in journalism?“Investigative reporting. It’s really hard to replace someone wanting to tell you a secret off the record. Get full access to Deadliners at deadliners.substack.com/subscribe