This Billionaire CEO Thinks We Are Entering A 'Golden Era of Content Creation'

I didn't know Cloudfare CEO Matthew Price by name, but the security technology that his company develops runs on the vast majority of websites. It turns out he is also passionate about local journalism. In 2023, he became the owner of his hometown newspaper, The Park Record. In an interview with Semafor this past week, Price said that even though AI is going to disrupt legacy media that it will create new opportunities:

“I believe that a whole bunch of existing media companies are about to get crushed, and I believe that we’re on the verge of the next golden era of content creation,” said Prince, the co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare, at Semafor World Economy in Washington, DC. “And the reason why is I think that things that are local, unique, differentiated are gonna be much more valuable.”

That remains to be seen, but he did make a comment that drew my attention. He said that reporter's notebooks could be mined by AI for information that doesn't make it into final works. I've long wondered if there was some way to use the "leftovers" that are generated while reporting but don't quite make the cut, so this idea appealed to me. I often have discussed this very situation with peers.

Would there be any interest in these reporting leftovers? It would probably be attractive to a niche audience, though as digital content becomes "liquid" this could be a way to provide sate the appetites of hungry LLMs. It could then be "remixed" into new forms or to generate insights.

This brings to mind CalMatters' new AI tool "Digital Democracy," which recently won the Trust in American Institutions Challenge ($1.8 million per year over five years). It's a novel use of AI to make searchable the actions of local government. It's reminiscent of a tool that Gotham Gazette (RIP) had developed. One of the problems in the past was the expense of updating the database. AI could bring down that cost.

Combine this with Prince's idea of mining reporters' notebooks or even the efforts of the Documenters Project and it could solve this costly labor problem.