On Montlake is 3 years old — and still human

At the risk of catastrophizing, I must confess that the rise of artificial intelligence — and our growing reliance upon it, particularly among young people — at times has me mourning a future we haven’t even lost yet.

That’s true of society at large, and especially of journalism or any other field that traditionally has delivered its wares with some promise that a human thought them up.

The present is alarming enough: earlier this month, the editor of the Cleveland Plain-Dealer went semi-viral after publishing a column detailing how his newsroom relies on AI to write story drafts — later edited and approved by humans — for coverage of certain counties. He touted that these three jobs are “100 percent reporting” and wrote: “By removing writing from reporters’ workloads, we’ve effectively freed up an extra workday for them each week.”

This logic might seem defensible on the surface: why not leverage AI to cover smaller communities if the alternative is not covering them at all? His contention isn’t that AI renders human journalists non-essential, but that it in fact might allow them to focus on the parts of the job that can only be done by a human. ChatGPT can’t gossip with a source over coffee, after all (or maybe it could, but it would just repeat phrases like “you’re right” and “great point” and “that’s not just turmoil — that’s a scandal”). It would be foolish, too, for any of us to believe the AI reaper isn’t coming for at least some part of what we might hold sacred.

Where this editor loses me — beyond expecting us to believe this experiment won’t someday end with fewer humans being paid a living wage to create journalism — is in his tsk-tsking of a college-aged reporter who applied for one of these positions, but withdrew from consideration due to the AI component. This is further evidence, the editor argued, of journalism schools biasing their students against the practice.

Good for that kid.

I like writing, too.

I’m guessing you all wouldn’t be here if I didn’t — not on Day 1, and not today, On Montlake’s three-year anniversary — because I’m not the only person covering UW football, and it’s not as if I ask every question at every press conference. I don’t specialize in breaking news, and I’m not trying to win with volume. 

You’re here for (human) perspective and nuance informed by access and experience. You love UW football; I love helping you feel closer to it. No doubt, good reporting should be the bedrock of any good story, and in today’s absurd social-media landscape, fairness and accuracy matter more than ever. But I can’t imagine feeding information to a chatbot in order to produce the copy, or operating in any way that diminishes the authenticity of what I deliver to your inboxes.

The craft still matters to me, because I know it still matters to you. That’s why nearly every change to our industry makes me that much more grateful to work for you, and nobody else.

We’ve been fighting this battle for some time, no? A boss at one of my first jobs once told me, amid corporate mandates to build slideshows and chase clicks, that “nobody cares about UW football.” Years later, at another stop, a corporate-side employee wondered if we should bother publishing a story about athletic-department finances, since it wasn’t the most click-worthy topic.

The Athletic offered a reprieve from this vacuous calculus, but eventually decided investing in local coverage didn’t pencil out.

Lucky us, right?

Three years in, your support continues to sustain a thriving independent business, one built upon the idea that people will pay for quality writing. It remains a privilege that I don’t take for granted. Your subscription dollars help pay my mortgage and grocery bill. You help fund travel to provide detailed, in-person coverage of UW football in Big Ten country, plus thousands of round-trip miles driven to Husky Stadium and back each year. You also help subsidize audio and video equipment and a boatload of subscriptions and fees for services like Pro Football Focus, Newspapers.com, QuickBooks, Gusto, Zoom, numerous media outlets and other items necessary to do the job and run the business (my accountant says thank you, as well).

I’ll always take most pride in quality reporting and writing — and co-hosting Say Who, Say Pod with Danny O’Neil remains a weekly highlight — but I’m also proud of how this operation has evolved. The recent move from Substack to Ghost is one example. I launched a YouTube channel last July so I could take you behind the scenes of UW football, using my access to show you what you couldn’t otherwise see. One of those videos recently earned “Excellence in Video” recognition in the Associated Press Sports Editors (APSE) annual writing contest. On Montlake also earned top-10 recognition for digital sections, a category otherwise dominated by legacy newsrooms with multi-person staffs. Add in top-10 honors in beat writing and column writing, and On Montlake is now a 10-time APSE honoree across seven different categories in just three years. (My favorite part of that self-aggrandizing factoid? Three of those stories were written about subscribers.)

That’s the challenge your support has laid out for me — to meet your expectations while thinking constantly about how I can surprise you with something even better.

When I started, Kalen DeBoer and Michael Penix Jr. were gearing up for a College Football Playoff run. Now, the Huskies are trying to make it back to the CFP with Jedd Fisch’s most talented roster yet at UW, but after an offseason marked by NIL-related matters. That’s as frustrating for you as it is fitting for the times we’re living in, excited as I still am to chronicle it all. Such upheaval has turned more than a few loyal subscribers into former subscribers, even if a strong base remains.

I get it. The sport has changed, and is still closer to the beginning of its transformation than the end. The same is probably true of our AI-powered world.

I hope it’s true of this little enterprise, too, but only in ways that reinforce what makes our community special.

In other words: I’ll keep writing like a person, because I know you’re still reading like one.

— Christian Caple, On Montlake

Questions? Email me: onmontlakeuw@gmail.com

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