An Update on the Newsie Project
The short version: we're on hiatus while I consider the next chapter.
Dear loyal readers,
Sorry for the radio silence for the last few weeks. Here’s what is going on: Over the holidays, I decided to put The Newsie Project on hiatus and take a break.
The Newsie Project launched in earnest in December 2024 as a series of experiments.
Could the current AI large language model (LLM) tools reliably and accurately summarize the key points of news reporting?
Could they reliably and accurately summarize across multiple stories? Using single-shot prompts to keep the process sustainable?
Turns out yes, and this summarization is one of the things they do best.
What tools would I need to extract and clean up news text? (You can’t just point ChatGPT at a news article most of the time, unfortunately.)
Could AI tools help me build the tools to do this quickly and sustainably?
Turns out yes, and writing code is one of the other things LLMs do really well.
Is there an audience for this kind of news analysis?
Ah, you, my friends, have been incredibly supportive of this effort. I certainly found it useful, and I think you did, too.
Unfortunately, building a larger audience capable of supporting more time and investment in this project proved to be the most difficult part and is where it ultimately failed… for this round, anyway.
Overall, however, I’d call it a success:
I proved that my idea was feasible.
I wrote a ton of useful code.
I learned a lot about LLMs and prompt mechanics (though AI turned out to be the least time-intensive part of the project).
I learned a LOT about web scraping, which turned out to be 80% or more of the project.
I learned a lot about current trends in reporting.
The downside was that I spent more time in the news than was probably healthy, and I need a break from that as well.
I don’t know what comes next. I still have some ideas for improving and expanding something like The Newsie Project. Professionally, I am working on AI safety and security projects and will be diving deeper into those topics, while also exploring what agentic AI can do beyond writing lots of code.
For those of you who pledged financial support as part of your subscription: I never set up The Newsie Project to accept payments, so you were not going to be charged and will not be.
I will follow up with a more detailed post-mortem on the project, along with technical details, for those interested.
Keep reading the news. Stay informed!
Invest time, care, and compassion in your local communities.
Thank you!
Terry Dorsey, The Newsie Project