#53 - Kelsey Piper on the room for important advocacy within journalism

#53 - Kelsey Piper on the room for important advocacy within journalism

“Politics. Business. Opinion. Science. Sports. Animal welfare. Existential risk.” Is this a plausible future lineup for major news outlets?

Funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and given very little editorial direction, Vox's Future Perfect aspires to be more or less that.

Competition in the news business creates pressure to write quick pieces on topical political issues that can drive lots of clicks with just a few hours' work.

But according to Kelsey Piper, staff writer for this new section of Vox's website focused on effective altruist themes, Future Perfect's goal is to run in the opposite direction and make room for more substantive coverage that's not tied to the news cycle.

They hope that in the long-term talented writers from other outlets across the political spectrum can also be attracted to tackle these topics.

Links to learn more, summary and full transcript.

Links to Kelsey's top articles.

Some skeptics of the project have questioned whether this general coverage of global catastrophic risks actually helps reduce them.

Kelsey responds: if you decide to dedicate your life to AI safety research, what’s the likely reaction from your family and friends? Do they think of you as someone about to join "that weird Silicon Valley apocalypse thing"? Or do they, having read about the issues widely, simply think “Oh, yeah. That seems important. I'm glad you're working on it.”

Kelsey believes that really matters, and is determined by broader coverage of these kinds of topics.

If that's right, is journalism a plausible pathway for doing the most good with your career, or did Kelsey just get particularly lucky? After all, journalism is a shrinking industry without an obvious revenue model to fund many writers looking into the world's most pressing problems.

Kelsey points out that one needn't take the risk of committing to journalism at an early age. Instead listeners can specialise in an important topic, while leaving open the option of switching into specialist journalism later on, should a great opportunity happen to present itself.

In today’s episode we discuss that path, as well as:

• What’s the day to day life of a Vox journalist like?
• How can good journalism get funded?
• Are there meaningful tradeoffs between doing what's in the interest of Vox and doing what’s good?
• How concerned should we be about the risk of effective altruism being perceived as partisan?
• How well can short articles effectively communicate complicated ideas?
• Are there alternative business models that could fund high quality journalism on a larger scale?
• How do you approach the case for taking AI seriously to a broader audience?
• How valuable might it be for media outlets to do Tetlock-style forecasting?
• Is it really a good idea to heavily tax billionaires?
• How do you avoid the pressure to get clicks?
• How possible is it to predict which articles are going to be popular?
• How did Kelsey build the skills necessary to work at Vox?
• General lessons for people dealing with very difficult life circumstances

Rob is then joined by two of his colleagues – Keiran Harris & Michelle Hutchinson – to quickly discuss:

• The risk political polarisation poses to long-termist causes
• How should specialists keep journalism available as a career option?
• Should we create a news aggregator that aims to make someone as well informed as possible in big-picture terms?

Get this episode by subscribing to our podcast on the world’s most pressing problems and how to solve them: type '80,000 Hours' into your podcasting app.

The 80,000 Hours Podcast is produced by Keiran Harris.

Jaksot(332)

#19 - Samantha Pitts-Kiefer on working next to the White House trying to prevent nuclear war

#19 - Samantha Pitts-Kiefer on working next to the White House trying to prevent nuclear war

Rogue elements within a state’s security forces enrich dozens of kilograms of uranium. It’s then assembled into a crude nuclear bomb. The bomb is transported on a civilian aircraft to Washington D.C, ...

14 Helmi 20181h 4min

#18 - Ofir Reich on using data science to end poverty & the spurious action-inaction distinction

#18 - Ofir Reich on using data science to end poverty & the spurious action-inaction distinction

Ofir Reich started out doing math in the military, before spending 8 years in tech startups - but then made a sharp turn to become a data scientist focussed on helping the global poor. At UC Berkeley...

31 Tammi 20181h 18min

#17 - Will MacAskill on moral uncertainty, utilitarianism & how to avoid being a moral monster

#17 - Will MacAskill on moral uncertainty, utilitarianism & how to avoid being a moral monster

Immanuel Kant is a profoundly influential figure in modern philosophy, and was one of the earliest proponents for universal democracy and international cooperation. He also thought that women have no ...

19 Tammi 20181h 52min

#16 - Michelle Hutchinson on global priorities research & shaping the ideas of intellectuals

#16 - Michelle Hutchinson on global priorities research & shaping the ideas of intellectuals

In the 40s and 50s neoliberalism was a fringe movement within economics. But by the 80s it had become a dominant school of thought in public policy, and achieved major policy changes across the Englis...

22 Joulu 201755min

#15 - Phil Tetlock on how chimps beat Berkeley undergrads and when it’s wise to defer to the wise

#15 - Phil Tetlock on how chimps beat Berkeley undergrads and when it’s wise to defer to the wise

Prof Philip Tetlock is a social science legend. Over forty years he has researched whose predictions we can trust, whose we can’t and why - and developed methods that allow all of us to be better at p...

20 Marras 20171h 24min

#14 - Sharon Nunez & Jose Valle on going undercover to expose animal abuse

#14 - Sharon Nunez & Jose Valle on going undercover to expose animal abuse

What if you knew that ducks were being killed with pitchforks? Rabbits dumped alive into containers? Or pigs being strangled with forklifts? Would you be willing to go undercover to expose the crime? ...

13 Marras 20171h 25min

#13 - Claire Walsh on testing which policies work & how to get governments to listen to the results

#13 - Claire Walsh on testing which policies work & how to get governments to listen to the results

In both rich and poor countries, government policy is often based on no evidence at all and many programs don’t work. This has particularly harsh effects on the global poor - in some countries governm...

31 Loka 201752min

#12 - Beth Cameron works to stop you dying in a pandemic. Here’s what keeps her up at night.

#12 - Beth Cameron works to stop you dying in a pandemic. Here’s what keeps her up at night.

“When you're in the middle of a crisis and you have to ask for money, you're already too late.” That’s Dr Beth Cameron, who leads Global Biological Policy and Programs at the Nuclear Threat Initiative...

25 Loka 20171h 45min

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