Otis Chandler

Facebook was born from a website made for elite students to rank their classmates’ sexual attractiveness; Twitter was a watercooler where bored office workers could get attention by telling jokes in public. It’s as if 3M’s accidental invention of Post-It notes while failing to make space glue landed them a UN veto.

ChatGPT can now search the web in a much better way than before. You can get fast, timely answers with links to relevant web sources, which you would have previously needed to go to a search engine for. This blends the benefits of a natural language interface with the value of up-to-date sports scores, news, stock quotes, and more.

Watching this from inside the media, I’ve experienced two contradicting feelings. First is a kind of powerlessness from working in an industry with waning influence amid shifting consumption patterns. The second is the notion that the craft, rigor, and mission of traditional journalism matter more than ever.