The old journalism is dying, a new one is emerging

A profound shift: faced with data overload, value is shifting towards analysis, anticipation, and meaning. By Xavier Comtesse

An article available in AGEFI: https://agefi.com/actualites/opinions/lancien-journalisme-se-meurt-un-nouveau-emerge

We are not entering a new information age. We are leaving one. Raw facts and processed information are no longer enough. The reader wants to know something else, especially what all this means for them and others. They want to understand the dynamics of events. They want to be able to model, to test. They want to anticipate changes. What tomorrow will reveal.

This shift is not a drift, it's a transformation because the public is immersed in too much information, in a continuous stream of raw data, alerts, and notifications. In short, they are over-informed and now expect something different.

What exactly?

Let's look at the signs: analytical newsletters are booming while general-interest newspapers are struggling. Analysis podcasts are outperforming news bulletins. Think tanks are recruiting journalists. Journalists are creating think tanks. This isn't a coincidence, but a shift in value. What the market now rewards is the ability to infer: to generate emerging data, analyses, and conclusions not yet formulated, from known data.

The classic model of information was deductive: a fact + a deduction = an article. The new model appears, with the widespread use of artificial intelligence (AI), as inferential*: a signal + an inference (via a knowledge graph) + an emergent context = an article.

Let's take an example to better understand this transformation of the underlying logic. Consider the question of the probable cause of the end of the Ukraine-Russia war: deductive reasoning would argue that the logic of the majority (fact) statistically wins wars. Consequently, Russia would be the victor, while inference would look more towards a logic of connection, such as the shortage of soldiers, noting that the current recruitment difficulties of both belligerents (signal) would betray their exhaustion. The war should end on its own without a true victor. We are in two different, almost opposing, universes of thought.

The journalism of tomorrow will not be judged on the quality of its information, but on the quality of its inferences.

Countess Xavier

In a certain sense, "inferential" journalism requires a different, but no less rigorous, intellectual approach. Only the logic changes, because it now involves showing the premises and signals, and especially the links that connect them, but also naming the uncertainties, tracing the path of reasoning, and not concluding oracularly , but reasoning openly by stating the hypotheses.

For journalists, their job is becoming that of a professional thinker. For readers, they will be proactive, because they can no longer simply receive information but will have to evaluate the reasoning.

For organizations (businesses, states, etc.), they lose control of the factual narrative but gain control of inference. The paradigm has shifted. Information was a photograph. Inference is a map, a graph. A photograph documents where you were. A map tells you where you could go, provided you know how to read it, of course.

The journalism of tomorrow will not be judged on the quality of its information, but on the quality of its inferences. This is an extraordinary shift that occurs, at best, only once a century. And if you were expecting me to tell you right now which of the two models of journalism will prevail, it's up to you, the reader, to grasp in a fraction of a second what this inference will reveal. It won't reassure you, but it will force you to think…

* Inference is a process that allows us to move from information signals to a new, emergent conclusion, while deduction guarantees the truth of the conclusion if the facts were true.

By Xavier Comtesse