Back to school — for some - Santa Barbara News-Press

Good morning, Santa Barbara ☀️

Here’s what we have for you today:

Big enrollment decline at Santa Barbara Unified Schools going back 11 years
PopUp bagels is replacing Blaze Pizza in Five Points
Harry and Meghan are leaving Montecito to return to England
And shoutout to reader Mary Sheridan, who correctly guessed “Friendship Manor” in Wednesday’s news quiz. Great job — and keep reading!

Top stories

Santa Barbara Unified students go back to school amid declining enrollment district-wide

By Julianna Lozada • Santa Barbara News-Press

PopUp Bagels to bring the ‘LA vibe’ to Santa Barbara’s Five Points this fall

By Sofia Wallace • Santa Barbara News-Press

Meghan and Harry, Duchess and Duke of Sussex, leaving Montecito to enroll kids in UK schools

By Sofia Wallace • Santa Barbara News-Press

The art of the journalist

There’s no substitute for a good journalist. Not even AI. I am increasingly reminded of that fact as we endure this current era of everyone talking about how AI is the future.

The San Francisco Standard recently reported about how a BlackRock analyst created a newsroom staffed by AI agents. Separately, Poynter reported how an endeavor called “Prism News” folded its 200 news sites that were using AI agents to scrape the internet to report news.

Apparently the AI news sometimes included plagiarism and inaccuracies. What a surprise. We also see this trend in AI-generated memes online.

Journalism is an art and simply cannot be reproduced, mimicked or duplicated by AI tools. Human beings, even with all their flaws, are attracted to stories in ways online scrapers are not. They are best equipped to find stories and tell them.

Just about every day my colleague, Tom Schultz, and I reminisce about the good old days, when we worked together in our 20s. My brain explodes with wonderment every time Jerry Roberts talks to me about his days of reporting on San Francisco City Hall. Our knowledge of news and details in the places we reported is vast and exists in only one place — our collective memories. The internet will never tap that resource.

This knowledge shows up in various ways in our stories and adds context and history. While AI does have some utility, such as data analysis, when it comes to first-hand reporting and writing, not everything can be figured out via a quick AI search.

This week, for example, our newsroom had a lengthy discussion about online comments, how we report on politicized issues, whether we treat every issue and topic “exactly the same,” or if we use our news judgment to decide how we present things and in what context.

We all agreed, then disagreed. We agreed again. We didn’t all think the same. But we were all smarter and more informed after the discussion. An AI search couldn’t replicate the benefits of that discussion.

The beauty of what we do in journalism is no different than how the guitarist Slash creates his unique sound or how Shohei Ohtani somehow manages to hit and pitch at the highest level in baseball. It’s unique to the individual.

What I have learned from years of teaching, editing and coaching is that you can’t teach “fire.” A person either has it — or they don’t. It’s what makes a journalist crank out a story on deadline. It’s what makes a journalist run out to the scene of a breaking news incident. It’s what makes a journalist write a banger lead because their brain uses a combination of observation skills, experience, wisdom, research and vocabulary to create something that only that individual could create.

The next time you’re at a party or gathering, find a journalist and talk them. I guarantee you it will be the best conversation you have.

AI has no fire. Journalists have fire. Those AI sites that scrape the internet for news are often referred to as “pink slime.” These sites, and evolving versions of them, probably aren’t going to go away, but hopefully the public will get better at rejecting the slime and embracing the fire, and knowing the difference between the two.

AI-generated news is a poor substitute for the brainpower of a journalist.

Joshua Molina

News-Press Editor

Stories you should know about

The U.S. debt hit an all-time high of $40 trillion. U.S. is on track to borrow $2 trillion this year (New York Times)

Map shows potential snowfall areas from the coming El Niño across the United States. California, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and parts of Colorado show above-normal snowfall. (Newsweek)

The success of the “KPop Demon Hunters” has sparked a lawsuit from Christian band Demon Hunter, which claims the movie “confuses” the public. (Los Angeles Times)

Looking back

Newsflash: The Castillo Underpass is still soggy. The News-Press has been writing about this for years. This story from Tom Schultz from 2006 highlighted the problem. A lot of money has been spent trying to solve a problem that likely cannot be solved completely.

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