Will James

I'm on episode three and damn. This is an incredible piece of journalism, reflection, and examination of things we take for granted.

Update

KUOW is coming for you, Joe.

I’m utterly uninterested in “debates” about whether AI can do things well. I wouldn’t care if it could. 1. It stole from me. 2. I prefer me having my job to a computer having it. 3. I don’t teach “with” Lockheed or Raytheon; why wld I teach with Anthropic or OpenAI?

Hey look, a podcast made by a local public radio station is at the top of Apple Podcasts.

Obey Apple and listen to "Adults in the Room" by @kuow.org.

Lost Patients Mental healthcare in America is a maze — by design.

"Adults in the Room" shares a podcast feed with "Lost Patients," the series I hosted in 2024.

Our goal is to keep this sort of deep storytelling alive, even as other news outlets retrench — to give this intense, high-quality treatment to local stories here in the Pacific Northwest.

In 'Adults in the Room,' a KUOW investigative journalist re-reports the story that's haunted her for nearly three decades The new series launches today as part of Focus, a dedicated podcast channel for immersive audio documentaries.

I'm really proud to have helped produce this. It's the start of a new era of investigative, documentary storytelling at @kuow.org.

"Adults in the Room" launches our new Focus podcast channel, where we'll drop more deeply-reported series — some of which are already in production.

Subscribe!

Another way to frame the question: Which "side" (AI adopters vs. non-adopters) would benefit more from this system?

And what does that mean?

In the marketplace, which of these labels do you think would be considered an advantage? Say, for a book, a video, an album, an article?

Which label would connote "premium" and which would signify "low-quality, cheap"?

(What delineates these tiers isn't important right now. Let's pretend there's an auditing system, like the food-inspection system, to enforce them...)

Thought experiment: A regulation requires creators of content to disclose their use of AI.

Say it's a tiered system: (1) AI-made, (2) AI-assisted, (3) AI-informed, (4) AI-free/Human-made...

If you use AI to make journalism, other writing, film, music, or visual art, you should have to label it, clearly and plainly. Consumers should be able to make informed choices about what they put into their brains and what they support.

I live to serve.

At some point, one has to ask: Of all the work that might be automated, why are we automating some of the most human work?

Art, music, film, writing. The sort of labor that enriches us, connects us, heals us, slows us down. Why are we constantly being sold the idea that this is what has to go away?

To “remove writing from reporters’ workloads” is to remove reporters’ critical engagement with a topic. The writing is an inextricable part of the process. It’s hard. It takes time. That’s the point! There are no shortcuts for writing and reporting, and AI can hardly approximate it. Stop doing this.

Why are you in the business of sense-making and connection if you want to automate those things?

There's no shortage of industries that exist to make the cheapest possible thing that people will still pay for. This, in fact, is almost every other enterprise in the world.

A young journalist apparently backed away from a job at the paper because of this. I stand with this person. This, to me, is a moral reaction.

We can just say no to this.

Journalism is a public service and a creative discipline built upon connection between human beings.

It is not a manufactured widget. By treating it as such, the Cleveland Plain Dealer devalues its own product.

When I pay for news (or any media) I am paying for the analysis, insight, judgement, and creativity of fellow human beings.

To learn that a robot wrote or drew something instantly cheapens it for me. I feel tricked. I am not interested in what an AI thinks some median person would have created.

Without this muscle, journalists cannot function.

Writing sharpens our thinking which sharpens our reporting.

The relationship between writing and reporting goes two ways, not just one, as the Cleveland Plain Dealer seems to believe.

Each time we write, we work a muscle. It's the muscle that takes in the splattered-about facts of the world and synthesizes them into something that makes sense.

It is the muscle of sense-making and meaning-making.

Letting AI write for us means letting this atrophy.

But having robots write for us means letting robots think for us.

Every sentence we write is an analytical choice, an ethical choice, a human choice.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer is defending its use of AI to write news stories so reporters can spend their time gathering information.

I don't envy any local outlet trying to make the broken economics of the journalism industry work for them..

I cannot stress this enough: writing is thinking.

Surviving teen shot at Seattle CHOP refiles lawsuit Robert West, who was 14 when he was shot in 2020, sued Seattle after a jury awarded more than $30 million to the family of a teen killed in the same shooting.

New: One week ago, a jury ordered Seattle to pay more than $30 million to the family of a teen killed at CHOP.

Today, a survivor of the same shooting filed his own lawsuit against the city.

Robert West was shot in the head at age 14 and survived.

www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news...

My colleagues had me on the @kuow.org arts show Meet Me Here to talk about Infinite Jest lol

www.kuow.org/stories/30-y...

"Adults in the Room" premiers later this month. You can hear the trailer now.

It's been illuminating to work alongside Isolde, editor Jeannie Yandel, and fellow producer Alec Cowan to help report and tell this incredible story for more than a year.

This launches a new effort at @kuow.org called "Focus" — a podcast channel where we'll bring you in-depth audio documentaries on a regular basis.

It builds off "Lost Patients," the podcast I worked on in 2024 with The Seattle Times.

Subscribe to Focus! We're keeping this type of journalism alive.

Coming Soon: Adults in the Room (Trailer) Podcast Episode · Focus: Adults in the Room · S2 Trailer · 3m

I'm very excited to announce a new investigative podcast I've been a part of.

"Adults in the Room" looks into a 25-year-old scandal at Seattle's elite Garfield High School that went unresolved... until my colleague Isolde Raftery revisited her high school years.

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/c...

We're working on it.