National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ)—written evidence (ACT0032)

House of Lords Communications and Digital Select Committee inquiry:

Scaling Up: AI and creative tech

Introduction

1. The NCTJ (National Council for the Training of Journalists) is a charity which works with the news media industry to develop professional qualifications and training programmes for UK journalists.[1]

2. Established in 1951, the NCTJ has maintained its position at the forefront of journalism training and qualifications, working closely with news publishers and broadcasters to ensure its courses continue to prepare prospective journalists for the rigours of the modern news environment. It also oversees professional development programmes to enable working journalists to update their skills and knowledge throughout their careers.

3. The NCTJ also invests in and manages a regular research programme as a service to the media industry (and other interested parties). This covers labour market information including the demographic make-up of the journalism sector, the skills used and required by journalists, and the connection between training and employment.

4. Eighty-three per cent of qualified UK journalists hold an NCTJ qualification.[2]

5. The charity’s watchwords are quality, trust and diversity.

6. Ensuring that prospective and working journalists understand the opportunities presented by AI is one of the NCTJ’s primary strategic objectives at the present time.

This Inquiry

7. The NCTJ welcomes the Committee’s attention to the vital question of how artificial intelligence (AI) can enhance the UK’s economic potential – and how the AI and creative technology sectors can best be supported.

8. Clearly, the NCTJ’s remit extends only to the news media sector, and to related sectors in which journalistic skills are used. Nevertheless, such is the potential importance of AI to journalism – both as an opportunity and as a challenge – that we are keen to add our perspective to the committee’s deliberations.
9. The impact of AI technology on journalism raises important questions for the news media industry and for those involved in the training of journalists: structurally, ethically and practically. While news organisations have used AI in many forms for a considerable time – to analyse datasets, or to help determine the credibility of source material, for instance – the exponential advances seen during 2023/24 mean new skills and technology must be mastered quickly and effectively.

10. That itself creates a challenge for an industry that has experienced economic headwinds in recent years. In particular, the regional news sector has suffered from structural changes to advertising markets and news consumption that have raised questions about the long-term future of local, trusted journalism. Nonetheless, AI may offer the potential to improve the sector’s sustainability. And in the wake of the disorder seen in British towns and cities during the summer of 2024, sustaining responsible news media at a local level has taken on even greater significance.

11. As is well-known, consolidation in the local news publishing sector means that a relatively small number of companies now dominate the landscape. The challenges facing those publishers have been well-rehearsed.

12. Smaller, independent publishers have emerged in many towns and cities – both in competition to bigger players, and in places which are otherwise not served by local news. These publishers are often reliant on the commitment of a small number of staff, sometimes including volunteers. Accessing finance can be particularly hard for these smaller players, making it hard to scale up operations.

13. Training and skills development can be a casualty where investment is at a premium. The recent, first report from Skills England[3] highlights a lack of skills as a barrier to economic growth. In some parts of the journalism sector, the challenge becomes a vicious circle.

NCTJ and AI

14. Programmes of study for NCTJ qualifications are regularly updated to stay abreast of industry practice. Similarly, the NCTJ regularly meets tutors from accredited courses to ensure teaching at those centres is suitable for the needs of modern journalism.

15. At the start of 2023, as the pace of developments in generative AI became widely-debated, the NCTJ began a scoping exercise to consider the potential impacts on its work. This included: an examination of existing programmes of study for the Diploma in Journalism (the typical entry-level qualification for UK journalists); the potential need to develop new professional development resources; and a consideration of how AI might affect online assessments and the NCTJ’s role as a regulated awarding organisation.
16. In the subsequent months, the NCTJ held discussions with academic and industry partners, carried out a survey of industry leaders, and conducted detailed research into newsroom practice. In November 2023, an e-learning course, ‘An introduction to AI and Journalism’, was launched on the NCTJ’s Journalism Skills Academy, aimed at working journalists and those about to enter the industry. From February 2024, the NCTJ began running webinars on AI and Journalism at both introductory and a more advanced level. All these courses have been updated regularly to ensure they remain relevant to the evolving newsroom experience.

17. In September 2024, the NCTJ published a wide-ranging report on the experiences of British journalists, the latest in its Journalists at Work series, based on a survey of more than 1,000 working journalists.[4] This found that just over a third of journalists were using AI technology in their job. However, sixty per cent felt they did not have sufficient understanding of how AI could help them in their work.

18. The ways in which journalists were found to be using AI were varied. The most common usage was for recording or transcribing interviews (19 per cent of journalists used it for this purpose); producing text articles was the next most common usage (9 per cent); then examining or scraping data (7 per cent). Other uses included targeting audiences more effectively, creating graphical content, research tasks, idea generation and assessing veracity of source material.

19. Asked about areas in which they would like to upgrade their skills, AI tools were among the most highly-rated. A quarter of respondents said they needed to develop AI skills to do their job more efficiently.

20. Notably, journalists who were already using AI in their work, were – on average – earning higher salaries: £38,292, against an average of £33,734 for those not using AI in their work.

21. In summary, the NCTJ has moved rapidly to secure a significant knowledge base around AI, journalism and journalism training – and to ensure partners in the education sector, the news media industry, and beyond stay connected with further developments. However, it is clear that more needs to be done to promote the opportunities offered by AI to the journalism sector.

AI and journalism – the future

22. Examples already abound of how news organisations are changing their practice in response to developments in AI technology – and particularly with regard to the rapid advances in generative AI. Inevitably, some organisations have approached the embrace of AI technology with more caution than others, although to date the UK news media sector as a whole appears to have struck an appropriate balance between deploying new technological solutions, and recognising the need for doing so responsibly.
23. Newsquest was an early adopter of ‘AI-assisted’ journalism, appointing ‘AI-assisted reporters’ to utilise an in-house drafting tool to turn information into articles. The company has described how the ability of these reporters to produce an increased number of stories consequently frees up other journalists to research and produce more in-depth coverage.[5]

24. News UK’s chief operating officer, David Dinsmore, recently discussed[6] the use by The Times (and other News UK titles) of an AI-powered content management system to help suggest headline, create article summaries and assist with ‘light subbing’. The system, known as ‘News Assist’, is an in-house version of ChatGPT.

25. Reach, which straddles the national and regional news sectors, introduced an AI tool (‘Guten’) at the start of 2024, which enables its journalists to rewrite stories which have already appeared elsewhere on the company’s network of news websites.

26. While other news organisations may have made an active decision not to roll out such tools, it is nonetheless important that lessons from these developments can be shared across the industry. Likewise, smaller publishers and news providers may need assistance in the development of their own approaches to using AI.

27. In this regard, the NCTJ can play a crucial role. As a pan-industry body focussed on training, the charity is able to bring together disparate partners from across the spectrum of news media – print, digital, broadcast; big players and small.

28. In discussion with some of our strategic partners from with the regional media, the NCTJ recently developed a proposal to create an ‘AI Journalism Network’, aimed at supporting the training of regional journalists in applicable AI tools. This project would also connect news publishers with universities and colleges which offer NCTJ-accredited courses, ensuring that industry practice is transferred to journalism training centres in the further and higher education sectors.

29. The costs of the proposal require a funding partner, and the NCTJ is currently seeking finance to launch the project in 2025. It is likely that funding will not come from within the news industry itself, given the economic challenges already referred to. The NCTJ is therefore exploring alternative avenues. 

30. It is notable, however that organisations such as the NCTJ – a medium-sized charity which carries out its training activities through a wholly-owned subsidiary, NCTJ Training Ltd – face some specific challenges around funding.
31. On the one hand, its annual income makes it ineligible to apply for grants from many of the UK’s grant-making organisations. On the other, its wide-ranging activities and relatively small size (17 members of staff) appear to make it ineligible for funding from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).

32. While the NCTJ has previously benefitted from significant support from the ‘big tech’ sector, the move by several key players in that arena (notably Meta) away from supporting journalism projects has seen funding largely come to an end.

33. The NCTJ believes the government should examine the degree to which research and innovation funding is sufficiently flexible to enable a wide range of organisations to seek the benefits of it.

34. Academic institutions – many of which the NCTJ works with in its role as an Awarding Body – are well-placed to undertake research, but applying innovations to a workplace setting (particularly one as fast-paced as journalism) requires a collaborative approach. The NCTJ will continue to play that role wherever possible, and we hope government will support those efforts in the critical news media sector.

October 2024

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