Friday Reading S14E07

I’m interested in journalism, media, technology, and nerdy things found down the back of the world wide web’s sofa. Most weeks I publish a handful of things I’ve read that caught my eye – regardless of what the algorithms were pushing at me. You can subscribe to get it by email here. And if you read something odd and wonderful you think I’d enjoy, feel free to send it my way.

I am very excited to be getting a new entry in the main Pokémon line. Keza MacDonald, however, seems to have Pokémon fatigue.

“The advert for that Pokémon Lego features a bored, tired-looking elder millennial guy in a grey suit glumly rifling through bills and invoices before donning a trainer’s cap and an expression of wonder and joining his friends outside. ‘Your time has come! And destiny doesn’t care about lower back pain!’ the ad says. AAAARGH! It’s so humiliatingly transparent! I feel both patronised and called out. Pokémon Go away.”

Keza has given Pokopia a rave review though, which has finally nudged me to get a Switch 2.

This is long – Teacher v chatbot: my journey into the classroom in the age of AI – and a topic I am preoccupied with, for journalism, not the classroom. Is AI filling the internet with slop? Yes. Is using tools at least labelled as “AI” an important part of my workflow now? Also yes. Peter C Baker writes:

“Throwing AI into the mix felt like downing a coffee in the middle of a panic attack. I started frantically seeking out perspectives on AI and the English classroom wherever I could find them: podcasts, Substacks, YouTube. My algorithmic feeds picked up on this interest and started catering to it, serving me an apparently endless supply of content – including endless advertising from tech companies – that promised to help me think through these urgent questions and ensure I did right by my students. I quickly learned that this was a world of heated, often acrimonious, debate.”

This self-exchange was illuminating:

Also me: “What if, after your AI-free reading and discussion, when students sat down to write, they each had access to an AI chatbot that could give them feedback tailored exactly to their existing comprehension level and learning style? What if you, the teacher, could train that chatbot, aligning its behaviour precisely to your goals for the assignment and the class overall?”

Me: “Well, that’s already my job – to give them personalised feedback.”

Also me: “But how much time do you have for that? Can you really intervene every single time it would be useful? What about when your students are writing at home? What about when it’s the night before an assignment is due and they’re off to a completely wrong start? Why wouldn’t you want them to know that?”

Talking of AI at work, the Guardian has updated its editorial code on the use of generative AI. It now says:

Generative AI is a broad label describing any type of artificial intelligence that uses unsupervised learning algorithms to create text, images, video, audio or code. The technology is rapidly becoming more sophisticated, integrated and accessible and can be responsibly used in many different ways. AI tools can be used, carefully and responsibly, as part of the creation of journalism. But the material created or adapted using generative AI can raise significant issues around bias, ownership, plagiarism and intellectual property rights. Most importantly for journalism, it is not reliable or consistent, and tends to introduce errors and inaccuracies in unpredictable ways. Guardian audiences are entitled to expect that work that appears under your byline has been authored by you. Journalists are always accountable for the journalism they create and the use of these tools requires absolute rigour and responsibility. Generative AI should only be used in line with the wider Editorial Code and the Guardian’s Generative AI principles. Gen AI can be used to enhance our journalists’ expertise but not replace it; active human oversight and control is essential. Any significant use of GenAI in a piece of journalism must be explicitly approved by the relevant senior duty editor and must be clearly signalled to the user, in line with our guidelines on transparency.

Ooooooft. Telegraph censured for story of fictional family’s struggle to pay school fees. There but for the grace of god etc etc …

Last year, after suggestions the whole article was generated by AI, the Press Gazette revealed it was written by a real journalist, based on a real telephone interview with a man who appears to have deceived the reporter and given them a fake name.

BUT ALSO the headline was “We earn £345k, but soaring private school fees mean we can’t go on five holidays”, LMAO, how did that not raise questions?

For Collegetown Magazine, Dylan Alphenaar takes a deep and disturbing dive into a mostly forgotten hostage-taking and shooting situation that unfolded at a college in Iowa in the 1980s.

It would be easier to write that as days became years and years became decades, friends and families of the victims overcame this senseless tragedy. That in the four decades since the killings, wounds have healed, and love, as our former president endorsed, has prevailed. The reality is different.

Read in full: Dylan Alphenaar in Collegetown Magazine – The Shooting of Two Cornell Freshmen, 42 Years Later.

This week’s Guardian Thursday news quiz: Pokémon, a ‘Pastafarian’ and Cheggers plays population!.

As a Leeds United supporter it was disappointing seeing fans boo Manchester City players breaking fast for Ramadan, something that the ipaper’s chief football writer, Daniel Storey, says was “introduced in 2021” and “for most of the last five years, it has barely merited a mention because, well, it just happened”.

That quote was highlighted in Jason Okundaye’s piece about increasing intolerance of minorities in British society. He wrote:

“As a republican, I’m surprised to find that perhaps the most authoritative figure, in this light, has been King Charles, who used his Christmas speech to talk about the importance of unity in a divided world, and the importance of “simply getting to know our neighbours”. But it is sobering that Charles is the only figure I could conjure up – at a time when our politics is so depleted of moral authority and doing what is right for its own sake, that royals begin to sound like radicals for coming out with simple and elegant calls for compassion. Who’d have thunk it?”

I’m a big fan of “old man pubs”, where I can often be found in the corner on my laptop. Social media is giving them a new lease of life among younger visitors, as Tomé Morrissy-Swan discovers.

Ben Robertson writes for ESC Insight about the selection of Finland’s entry for Eurovision, which has served to show that the issue of Israeli participation in the contest is not going away any time soon.

“ The duo could have accepted the Eurovision invitation without further comment. They could also have chosen to take the statement and withdraw from the competition entirely. This middle ground, competing yet speaking out about Israel’s participation in the Eurovision Song Contest, might feel principled, but it risks being dismissed as cosmetic resistance by those critical. In the end, Parkkonen’s pivot that “this is about music, and we are here as artists” suggests the dilemma of ultimately wanting to be a pop star yet having to navigate the world’s toughest political decisions when others choose not to speak.”

“This is an issue that still drives media attention, with journalists seeking every opportunity to put opinions on the record. This is an issue that campaigners still protest about, working hard to keep it high up the agenda. And this is an issue that follows the Song Contest as a dark shadow, making an environment where artists are not free to focus purely on their art and enjoy it.”

I mentioned this week in my movie reviews that one of the highlights of EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert for me was seeing Elvis in the musical director role in rehearsals.

Jim Farber’s feature on the movie touches on the same theme, with Jerry Schilling, who worked with Elvis in the 1970s, making a similar point:

“That comes through most clearly in the rehearsal footage included in the film. “That’s where you see that Elvis was the most underrated producer in music,” Schilling said. “He’s fixing the musicians, fixing the backup singers, and fixing the music overall. Elvis wasn’t just a great artist, he was a great listener.””

“Case in point is an extended version of Suspicious Minds where Elvis’s patterns of calls and responses with his backup singers, the Sweet Inspirations, so delight them they giggle with joy. “It wasn’t like it was Elvis and then the back-up singers and the band,” Schilling said. “He saw himself as part of the band.””

Shaad D’Souza interviews Robyn for The Face as she prepares to release her first album for eight years, although frankly these lyrics in the title track Sexistential have given me the ick:

My body’s a spaceship with the ovaries on hyperdrive
Got a whole universe inside that exists in between my thighs
Do I have a consistent will to persist and finish this ride?
My babymaker’s got twenty in the clip, ready to fire

Blue Horizon is one of those record labels I really remember from being allowed to play my parents’ 45s as a kid and them having records by Fleetwood Mac and Chicken Shack. The founder has died. Garth Cartwright writes about Mike Vernon here, making sure to note that “he once told me he always thought [David Bowie’s] The Laughing Gnome, which he also produced, would be a hit.”

For those of us of a certain age, the prospect of being with a load of adults belting out primary school bangers like Shine Jesus Shine and Give Me Oil in My Lamp will either trigger nostalgia or nausea.

Jennifer Shahade tells Donald McRae ‘There’s a long and embedded history of abuse in chess’ in one of his typically thought-provoking interviews.

Is it a truism that as you get older you suddenly find yourself drawn to bird-watching? I really enjoyed Kevin Rushby on bird calls on a North York Moors walk.

My contributions to the Guardian’s First Edition newsletter this week were:
·  Monday briefing: What does the escalation in the Middle East mean for global stability?

·  Wednesday briefing: Was the chancellor’s spring statement already out of date?

Friday Reading is a (usually) weekly series of recommended reads from Martin Belam, covering journalism, media and technology, and other interesting nerdy things found on the internet. It is now in its fourteenth season. Sign up here to receive it by email.