"We cannot wait for readers to find us. We must go to them."
On June 3, the 77th World News Media Congress (WNMC) in Marseille, France, brought together over 1,000 journalists and media executives from more than 60 countries. Among the attendees were A.G. Sulzberger, chairman and publisher of The New York Times, and Katharine Viner, editor-in-chief of The Guardian, who gathered to discuss survival strategies for journalism in the age of AI.
Seo Hye-seung, editor-in-chief of Aju Media Group's English news agency AJP, was the only speaker from South Korea.
With AI emerging as a central theme of this year's congress, AJP's presentation highlighted new possibilities for journalism in the AI era.
During the session titled 'How AI Is Transforming the News Experience,' Seo introduced strategies for multilingual news production and expanding global readership.
He defined AJP's identity as 'Asian Substance in English,' proposing a new role for English-language news agencies in the AI age. "We have discovered our role as a news agency that conveys Asian stories in the language that AI understands best," he said.
Aju Media Group publishes content in five languages: Korean, English, Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese. AJP serves as the English-language news agency at the center of this multilingual strategy.
Seo explained that AJP uses AI as a starting point for designing news production and distribution systems. In an environment where generative AI is changing how news is produced and distributed, AJP is leveraging AI not just as a translation tool but as a content expansion platform, establishing a differentiated model from traditional media outlets.
"Our goal is to become journalists that AI can learn from and keep up with, rather than just journalists who use AI well," he said, adding that as technology advances, the role of journalists in reporting from the field and interpreting context becomes even more crucial.
This aligns with the message delivered by Sulzberger during his keynote address on the first day of the congress.
Sulzberger emphasized that "the important facts that people know ultimately come from journalism's unique reporting," asserting that even as generative AI advances, the role of journalism in uncovering new facts cannot be replaced.
He criticized AI companies for using media content as training data without providing fair compensation, stating, "AI operates on information produced by journalism."
One of the most frequently mentioned concepts at this congress was 'Liquid Content.' This model allows a single piece of reporting to be transformed into various formats—articles, videos, audio, summaries—tailored to the reader's context and needs.
This represents a shift away from the traditional approach of waiting for readers to come to the media, moving towards a model where content proactively reaches readers based on their interests and needs.
In practice, major global media outlets are utilizing AI not merely as a tool for automating tasks but as a means to redesign the reader experience. Experiments include personalized news recommendations, transforming article archives into interactive services, and reformatting a single article into multiple formats for reader consumption.
While technology is rapidly evolving, what readers seek remains reliable information and original reporting. AI may change how news is produced, but it cannot replace the fundamental reasons for the existence of journalism.
Although the way news is delivered to readers is changing, the value of journalism in discovering and verifying new facts remains unchanged. This was the overarching message of the congress.
* This article has been translated by AI.
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