Key Qualities Modern Journalists Need in the AI Era

By Orr Hirschauge & Adi Barill,
co-founders of Alchemiq

Different eras and publication types imagined different ideal journalists. The generative AI era marks the first time that the production mode of journalism itself is shifting.

What does this mean for the profession? And while more technical,mechanical,and routine work is automated,which journalistic skills will become the most valuable?

‘Rat-like cunning’

In his 2020 book,“news and How to Use It,” Alan Rusbridger,former editor in chief of The Guardian and chair of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism,revisits a list of qualifications published in 1969 by Sunday Times foreign correspondent Nick Tomalin.

Tomalin wrote: “The only essential qualities for real success in journalism are rat-like cunning, a plausible manner, and a little literary ability.”

Rat-like cunning, he explained, is “needed to ferret out and publish things that people don’t want to be known.”

A plausible manner is “useful for surviving… helpful with the entertaining presentation of it.”

He added several other traits he considered “helpful, but not diagnostic”:

• “Total recall.”
• “A good digestion and a steady head.”
• “Enough idealism to inspire indignant prose, but not enough to inhibit detached professionalism.”
• “A paranoid temperament.”
• “A knack with telephone, trains, and petty officials.”
• “The capacity to steal other people’s ideas and phrases is also invaluable.”
• “the strength of character to lead a disrupted life without going absolutely haywire.”

Tomalin was killed four years later by a Syrian missile in the Golan Heights.

The Dunleavy school

A very different, though not entirely unrelated, picture emerges from “Paper of Wreckage” (2024), Susan Mulcahy and Frank DiGiacomo’s history of the New York Post. They cite reporter Richard Esposito’s description of the skills he learned from working with Steve Dunleavy, a relentless tabloid reporter known for his raw, high-pressure style.

“How to get a picture from a widow, or how to get a mother whose son might have killed somebody to get you into her apartment.”

“The first thing was always wear a shirt, tie, and jacket. Make people feel you’re respecting them.”

“To bring flowers to someone’s house and say ‘I’m sorry you’ve had a tragedy in your life.’”

Eric Fentman, an associate editorial page columnist and editor, adds an assessment that captures Dunleavy’s entire ethos: “His strength as a journalist was his willingness to do anything for a story. And his weakness was his willingness to do anything for a story.”

Mail Men

A third set of qualities appears