»I believe that journalism is in urgent need of change« On the relationship between academic journalism training and journalistic practice

By Gabriele Hooffacker and Nicola Moser | Generative language models and AI tools have become essential tools in journalism – used in data analysis, research, translation, idea generation, and much more. How will the use of tools like ChatGPT impact the shape of journalism as a profession, and its academic teaching? Analysis of these expert interviews shows that ChatGPT and similar AI tools are already playing a role in academic journalism training. But while university teaching assumes that generative language models will not fundamentally change the shape of journalism, but merely expand it, the practicing expert interviewed sees a fundamental shift in the relationship between editorial offices and audiences. He also describes how the use of AI tools has long become common practice in editorial offices.