Friday 9th June: Catch up on the action from FIPP Congress

Good morning! Today's newsletter is brought to you by Esther. This will be the last one directly from me for a couple of weeks as I squeeze out another baba.

Catch up on the action from FIPP Congress

If you, like me, would really like to be sipping sangria in Cascais right now (okay okay and learning from some of the best minds in media), FIPP have a crack team of journalists covering some of the best sessions.

Peter Houston is out there catching up with guests and speakers for some takeaways we’ll be releasing as a special episode. But if you can’t wait for that, here is our pick of some of the best pieces from the Congress so far.

This is a fascinating peek behind the curtain at one of The Atlantic’s recent projects. Last year, the data science team brought two interesting trends up: of the top 100 search terms on the site, 30% were Atlantic writers; of the top 20 search terms, half of those were Atlantic writers. This is a masterclass in useful data to collect to better serve users, and how to then design and action it.

Beyond just a ‘nope’, here, Peter looks at why AI won’t replace journalists, critics, or anyone else in the media who is doing truly creative, clever, insightful work. “If anything, the tide of AI crap that is about to engulf us will push people to seek out top-quality content that could only have been made by a real live human being,” he adds.

I’ll finish with a light one ahead of the weekend. The Drum’s John McCarthy spent an intense two full days in LadBible HQ, learning what it takes to maintain the top spot of social publishers. “It was like a trip to Disneyland for a media nerd like me. I was right at home,” he wrote. “My mission was to learn what it takes to really bottle that coveted connection with Gen-Z and sell it to advertisers.”

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