From Print to Pocket: Striking a fine balance

It's a question that has been debated vigorously for the past decade - Will print media completely disappear? 
Several newspapers around the world, including the UAE, have ceased operations in the past few years, while many have transformed into digital-only. UAE tabloid newspaper 7DAYS ceased operations in 2016 after 13 years of publishing. The Middle East edition of the Femina magazine shut down in 2017. Britain's Independent newspaper also ceased publications in 2016 and restructured their business to only digital. 
Online advertising has taken off, putting print media organisations out of business. 
However, there is one newspaper in the UAE that has not only consistently provided quality news to its readers, but also met with the needs of the market, ensuring business runs smoothly. Now, celebrating its 40^th anniversary, Khaleej Times has always had a strong focus on its newspaper and its digital side. 
Mustafa Al Zarooni, a member of the UAE Journalists Association and UAE Editor of Khaleej Times, believes it is essential for newspapers to ensure they keep up with the latest digital and market trends in order to survive the shrinking print media industry. 
"As for whether newspapers will remain or vanish is a question of time. This issue came under discussion some years ago. Yet, the most interesting thing here was the speculation that print media might disappear in 2015, while some others predicted it would be no more by 2020," Al Zarooni said.
"Today, newspapers are still running. Add to that, some fresh newspapers came to light. We should not play it up when we say that many people turned to digital rather than print. Advertisements that appear on newspapers' websites are not up to the mark, but they are developing and increasing noticeably. If newspapers failed to cope up with such a change in their paper and digital platforms, they might face financial problems." 
He said that many digital-only newspapers, which themselves had predicted the end of newspapers, have faced shutdowns due to "incompetent outcomes" and their "failure to manage their financial incomes properly and practically".
"Having a future look to press, especially newspapers that innovate to generate incomes to the papers, they ought to keep up with the market. For government-funded newspapers, they will keep on and continue despite the economic fluctuations they may go through, as the objective is that they communicate the governments' messages to societies," Al Zarooni added. 
Becky Anderson, Managing Editor, CNN Abu Dhabi and Anchor, Connect the World with Becky Anderson, said that there's "no question that print has had a tough time", and those challenges are here to stay, though news outlets are focusing on certain aspects that make their brand stronger.
"But there's a realisation now that focusing on the strength and heritage of a news brand, and sticking to the values that brand was built on, has real power. Some print publications still have a big head start in this regard, and I think the ones that survive can build a future based on that. That future may be more in digital form than print, but they don't have to be mutually exclusive," she said. 
"I think the revolution in news consumption will carry on, but that doesn't mean print will die. I always look at vinyl: from cassettes to CDs to MP3s, every single one of those was meant to kill it off, but it still survives. Sales will never be what they were, but there's a growing niche of vinyl buyers now because the medium itself has a value. That tactile feel of a vinyl record can't be replicated, and it's the same with a magazine, or a newspaper, or a book. Print magazines will never reach the huge circulations they once had, but if you go to a newsstand in a major city you'll see all kinds of niche titles, big glossy magazines with ultra-high production values and a cover price to match. Clearly there's a market there, it's just smaller and more focused.
"Personally, I hope newspapers and magazines find a way to evolve, survive and ultimately thrive.  There's nothing like the feeling of print and paper; you interact with it differently and it has a timeless appeal. Also, let's face it, you wouldn't want to swat a mosquito with an iPad."
Predictions on whether newspapers will completely disappear remain to be ongoing and unsolved. In the meanwhile, grab a copy of Khaleej Times, which is still very well alive and celebrating four decades of quality news and readership.
Welcome to the age of automation
The rise of automation around the world has put an endless number of human jobs at risk - journalists are at no exception. 
Robotic automation will replace the jobs of about 800,000 workers around the world by 2030, according to a 2017 study by the McKinsey Global Institute.
The Washington Post's robot reporter has published almost 1,000 articles since it was launched in 2016. They use an artificial intelligence (AI) technology, called Heliograf, to cover sports stories and election-related stories.
In 2015, the Associated Press started using AI to automate their quarterly earnings report. It increased their output by tenfold, generating more than 3,000 stories per quarter compared to 300 previously. 
Should journalists worry about losing their jobs? The world's youngest AI scientist and AI expert for IBM, Tanmay Bakshi, believes automation will assist journalists rather than replace them. 
"There's one person that asked me quite a long time ago if AI would take his job as a journalist and if AI will replace journalists - what I believe is no. Rather, what I think is that AI will be very helpful to journalists in newsrooms. The reason I say this is because journalists have to manually go through an audio file of an interview and create an article. That's very inefficient. If you have to create 10 articles, that will easily take you several days to do everything you need to do if you want high-quality work. AI can help us generate the unstructured data that the interviewee gives while speaking to the journalist and give recommendations on how the journalist can make it even better," Bakshi said, adding that he is certain newsrooms will rapidly integrate AI within their work as it becomes more widely available. When asked if field reporters will be replaced by robots, Bakshi believes humans have a few required skill-sets that AI does not have.
"It's possible but I would bet against it because even robot reporters require a level of creativity and imagination and this is something computers simply don't have. I don't think there will be robot reporters, but there will be robot reporters that help humans to create reports better and quicker," he said. 
Anderson believes that the UAE has "huge ambitions" to become a centre of AI excellence and has an early-mover advantage in terms of embedding AI across industries. 
"When it comes to spotting social media trends and helping certain stories reach the surface there's something fascinating about the developments in AI. If you look at the way AI is revolutionising other industries like stock trading, you can see immediately how fast the technology is developing, and there are clear applications for that kind of artificial insight in the newsroom," Anderson said. 
 "But journalism is about so much more than that; the nuanced insight that comes from human experience, the emotional intelligence you need to evaluate certain situations or people, qualities like passion and empathy, working out the best way to tell or champion a story that might seem boring but is incredibly important - all of that is, I think, impossible to replace."