FixEd podcast: Jakub Parusinski on AI in the media industry

The Fix is launching a new podcast! Every two weeks, we’ll speak with European and global media leaders to dive into trends, best practices, and inspiring stories. To follow us, subscribe to the FixEd podcast on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

In the inaugural episode, host Eliza Diamantidi sat down with The Fix’s own Jakub Parusinski. We spoke about the role of AI in media – and is it truly useful for the future of news?

Listen to the full conversation and read key highlights from the interview below.

• AI produces grammatically flawless content but suffers from a fundamental quality problem rooted in superficiality. Parusinski’s experiments, including at KI Insights – a high-end research product from The Kyiv Independent – haven't yielded a single piece of AI-generated content meeting high standards. The issue isn't technical proficiency; it's the inability to conduct real reporting, pick up phones, or extract non-public information.

• Parusinski compares the media industry to restaurants – diverse, fragmented, and serving different appetites. Some want fast-food tabloid content (where AI might work), others need Michelin-star quality analysis. AI currently serves up well-presented but ultimately hollow dishes, pulling from a (mostly poor-quality) pool of public content.
  

• The core functions of journalism have been steadily extracted by other platforms, creating an existential shift for the industry. Entertainment news? That's comedy shows and social media creators. Breaking news? Politicians communicate directly via their own platforms. What remains for journalists is the unglamorous but essential work: understanding local development plans, tracking political decisions, building community trust.

• Young journalists face a double bind that’s creating a skills crisis across the industry. AI is eliminating the mundane tasks that traditionally served as training grounds, while the industry simultaneously suffers from declining basic reporting skills. The real concern is that Gen Z journalists increasingly avoid picking up phones or meeting sources in person.

• The smartest applications of AI for media organizations lie beyond content creation, in business infrastructure and operations. Customer service chatbots, churn prediction, marketing materials – these are where AI actually delivers value. As Parusinski jokes, “at least you have ChatGPT to talk to” – perhaps AI can at least serve as a therapist for struggling journalists.