In the Age of AI, Writers Lean Into the Human Touch

In 2013, writer Elliot Ackerman, A03, F03, had the chance to interview a former fighter for Al-Qaida in Iraq. As an eight-year veteran of the Marines who fought in Iraq, Ackerman was curious to know more about an adversary he had never met, yet who had been a partner in a “shadow dance.” At one point during the interview, the two men began marking up a map with dates. 

“We were trying to figure out if we had been in the same place on the same day, fighting against each other,” Ackerman said. 

Looking for connections between people, even ones as charged as battle dates, is something Ackerman tries to do in much of his writing. Ultimately, he says, writing is an assertion that “all of us human beings are more similar than we are different.”

Ackerman was the keynote speaker at a September 21 forum hosted by the Institute for Storycraft and Information Gathering (ISIG), a nonprofit founded last year by eight Tufts alumni and dedicated to educating and supporting the next generation of journalists and nonfiction storytellers. 

Held at Joyce Cummings Center on the Medford/Somerville campus, the forum featured Tufts alumni and faculty speakers who work as reporters, filmmakers, and researchers. They talked about the power of making connections: between interviewer and interviewee, between a publication and its readers, between media and society. 

Fittingly, ISIG grew out of personal connections. In 2022, a group of former Tufts Observer staffers from the mid-80s (back when the Observer was a weekly student newspaper) had the chance to see each other as part of a multiclass reunion. They had a blast, even putting out a special “OG Reunion Edition” of the Observer. 

The ISIG founders, clockwise from left: Ken McGagh, A86, Brad Hamilton, A86, Tony Loftis, A85, Elana Varon, J87, A24P, Victoria White, J85, Elizabeth Moore, J87, Karyn Columbo, J85, and Bess Winston, J87 (not pictured). Photo: Lisa Aileen Dragani

When they got to talking about their careers, they found that whether they were in journalism, public relations, publishing, education, or marketing, they were seeing some of the same challenges among younger people coming into those fields. 

For one thing, “they’re hungry for mentorship,” said Elana Varon, J87, A24P, ISIG vice president. The old pipeline for journalists—starting at a local paper, which was a feeder for the metro daily—has changed with the shuttering of many local publications. Today, new reporters may start as freelancers and/or work remotely and have less face time with other writers and editors who they can learn from.

Brad Hamilton, A86, ISIG president, praised young adults today for the high importance they place on authenticity, rejecting traditional journalism tropes that smack of artifice. “They are open to different ways of covering things, different ways of presenting stories,” he said.

Yet many, he said, haven’t had opportunities to gain the practical skills of information gathering, many of which he learned early in his career as a reporter in the competitive daily news environment of the New York Post. Knowing how to talk on the phone with a source, for example. Emailing and texting are fine for some stories, said Hamilton, “but when you’re trying to build rapport, when you’re trying to build trust with a source, you have to speak to them.”

And these skills are not just important in communications careers, Varon said. “If you’re in any kind of advocacy role, you have to be able to write credibly, and that means delivering honest information in a compelling way.”

With the Observer veterans and one former Tufts Daily staffer willing to volunteer their time, ISIG was launched. In addition to Varon and Hamilton, the founding board is made up of Victoria White, J85, Karyn Columbo, J85, Tony Loftis, A85, Ken McGagh, A86, Elizabeth Moore, J87, and Bess Winston, J87.

So far, ISIG has hosted events with writers, editors, producers, and photographers from such media outlets as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Dateline NBC. (A call for ideas for speakers and topics for next year’s forum will go out soon.) Opportunities for networking and to request mentoring are baked into most events. 

With a three-year, $75,000 grant from Cummings Foundation, the institute also plans to pilot a news literacy program for public school students in the Boston area. 

At this year’s forum, Sarah Sobieraj, professor and chair of sociology at Tufts, led a workshop on interviewing skills, based on her experiences drawing out subjects for academic studies as well as her books on political culture. 

Building rapport with your interviewee is important, she said, and something you can work at. Rather than jumping into your list of interview questions, she said, start with something casual. “Interviewing small talk is purposeful,” Sobieraj said. “Small talk is always a search for commonality,” even if it is simply that you both had a long commute that day. 

The theme of the forum was “The Human Touch,” and the panelists had lots to say about what that means for storytelling in the age of AI.

Rosanna Xia, A11, an environmental reporter for the Los Angeles Times, said that AI is already writing some stories for that publication: Quakebot, a computer program that reviews earthquake notices from the U.S. Geological Survey, generates draft articles with the basic information, although staffers review them before posting. 

Yet Xia is skeptical that AI can match humans in many media jobs. For her recent award-winning book on the disappearing California coastline, Xia gave much credit to the copyeditor who did the final edit. She expected the scan for errors would be straightforward and technical, but the editor’s questions on word choice ended up getting Xia to rethink whole paragraphs, improving her prose overall. 

“That was the final step of the writing process that I didn’t know I needed,” Xia said. “I don’t know if Grammarly or something like that will ever be able to do that for you.”