by Jackie Goutor
Meet Jessica Johnson
Jessica Johnson began February’s event by explaining that the intended throughline for her presentation is “how to manage your career in a rapidly changing industry.” Johnson is certainly familiar with the accelerating pace of technology-driven change, starting her career with the (now defunct) Saturday Night Magazine, before moving to reporting and editing for the Globe & Mail. From there, she joined the (basically defunct) Hudson’s Bay Company as copy director, or “chief adventuress of writing.” In 2017, Johnson was appointed editor-in-chief at The Walrus, and in 2023
she left publishing altogether to become a senior fellow at the Centre for Media, Technology and Democracy, and an adjunct professor of journalism and media studies at the University of Toronto. Media has changed every decade of her career, with each change bringing pronouncements about the death of media. Now we’re in a particularly intense time, so much so that Johnson’s current research project (“What Should the CBC Be?”) focuses on the future of Canada’s national broadcaster and the role of public media in general.
Work in the “new media”
Media now encompasses anything from traditional media to TikTok. StatCan reports that the average journalist in Ontario makes $48 an hour, but the big change in the newsroom is the end of full-time work. Reporters now are either part-time or contract, and the big companies often go under—consider the recent layoffs at Vice Canada. With Meta and Google taking in over 80 percent of advertising revenue in Canada, combined with Bill C-18, COVID-19, and the global economic downturn, this is one of the hardest economic times in journalism.
The quality of jobs is definitely changing. While social media can be news, much of it isn’t, and generating revenue from non-traditional platforms can be hard. Substack, for example, seems promising, but it can only be one source of revenue among many. Rachel Gilmore, whose Linktree spans seven social media platforms, is a great example of one possible future of journalism, as are Justin Ling and Paul Wells. If media is a business, then journalists need to treat themselves as business owners, and, as Johnson says, “make the business of journalism work for you.” Gilmore, Ling, and Wells are all brands, and in fact, this was always true of journalists—it’s just more transparent now.
Johnson offered five survival tips for aspiring journalists:
- No one works full-time (as mentioned above), so plan a career as a freelancer. The big newsrooms will be able to offer you more hours, but the traditional 40-hour workweek doesn’t exist anymore.
- Your outlet is not your career. Media outlets are companies, and they hire and fire like companies. They fold like companies. So, you owe them what you would owe any company.
- Turn down work that doesn’t feed you.
- Ask for mentorship. People are happy to help the way they’ve been helped. But don’t waste someone’s time. Ask for a 10-minute phone call of specific, targeted advice. Also, aim for the middle of the masthead. Research the backgrounds of the senior and associate editors instead of the editor-in-chief, as they may have insight into your specific interests.
- Go for the most interesting opportunity, not the most glamorous job.
The arrival of AI
Where does AI fit in? Johnson reminded us that bots have been writing copy for a while, particularly the types of sports and financial writing built around reporting data and dates, and no one noticed or cared.
In July 2023, Associated Press received a $10 million grant after agreeing to allow OpenAI to use AP’s content to build its knowledge base. That same month, Google began visiting newsrooms, and managers started sending out memos about how great it would be if everyone used AI. Reporters panicked, and it was all a bit of a boondoggle, as Johnson put it. AI, she observed, increasingly seems as volatile as Bitcoin, and there’s certainly no consensus about how it should be used.
Johnson suggested some “good uses for AI in editing.” AI can
- generate ideas for headlines and subheads,
- create drafts of Twitter threads and LinkedIn or Facebook posts,
- summarize or describe existing content, and
- turn notes into draft text for review.
However, AI cannot
- author original journalism from scratch,
- conduct interviews, or
- copy edit sentences that contain layers of meaning.
A final message
We finally moved into the Q&A portion of the presentation, a fascinating discussion on journalism, AI, and the state of local media in Canada’s rural areas. Johnson’s final message to the group was that the next wave of action to preserve and adapt local media must come from citizens, through action and through policy.
Jackie Goutor is a Toronto-based fiction editor with a special interest in mysteries, science and speculative fiction, and fantasy.
This article was copy edited by Lily Omidi.
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It’s great that Jessica Johnson and others are keeping on top of and sharing info about trends in journalism. Things sure are different from how they were in journalism when I was in it, way back in the last century.
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