JENELL TAYLOR
Staff Writer
After spending 12 years as the senior personal technology columnist at The Wall Street Journal and creating the newsletter and video series “Tech Things,” Joanna Stern has solidified herself as one of the nation’s most trusted voices for reporting on technological advancements. Now, she leads a tightly-knit team of creatives for her newest endeavor, an online media outlet called “New Things,” where she continues to report on consumer technology.
Stern’s lecture at 10:45 a.m. today in the Amphitheater addresses Chautauqua Institution’s Week Two theme of “Breaking the News: Charting a New Media Landscape,” in which she will discuss her recent projects and her thoughts on the constant shifting of today’s information sphere and what that means for consumers.
“When I began my career, people were primarily still — crazily enough — picking up magazines and print newspapers. I started my career before the iPhone, before the iPad. I started maybe two years before that,” Stern said.
She went on to describe how the integration of mobile devices early in her career impacted media consumption.
“Enter the iPhone, enter the iPad, enter all the other digital devices in our world,” she said. “We saw what mobile devices did to the print world — both the print advertising world and the print sales world. And so people’s behavior shifted fully to phones and digital devices.”
Mulling over the new ways society is consuming its news and brainstorming where her career would take her post-WSJ, Stern saw an opportunity to further dive into reporting the facts that earned her the loyalty of her audience.
“I was ready for a new challenge, and I saw what was happening in the media landscape, which was that many people at the Journal and beyond were following me, and not necessarily just the brand of The Wall Street Journal,” she said.
With “New Things,” Stern is using newsletters, YouTube videos and articles to connect with a wider range of tech lovers and those curious about where the future of media is heading. In editorial partnership with NBC News, the same standards that shaped her work at WSJ will apply in full effect at “New Things.”
“We do a lot in the newsletter and videos that help guide people to understand the tech in their lives better and to provide tips on how to better navigate through tech,” she said. “My feeling is that right now with [artificial intelligence] and with all these new types of devices that are coming out, people need guidance more than ever.”
Stern previously spoke at Chautauqua in 2024 tackling the theme “The AI Revolution.” This year, in addition to discussing the ebb and flow of the contemporary media landscape, she will be speaking about her debut book, I Am Not A Robot: My Year Using AI to Do (Almost) Everything. On each page, she recounts integrating AI into all aspects of her daily life. AI was used to entertain, chauffeur and therapize Stern for a full year. It was even used to read her mammogram.
“Whether it’s listening to AI music for a season or reading AI books for a season — I did all of that, and every time it felt like something was missing. It’s the same for the written word or journalism,” she said. “There’s always going to be a human in that, and whether they use AI to help improve or make themselves more efficient is the question.”
Stern knows that the laundry list of reasons to be apprehensive of AI only grows by the day, but she also believes that there are beneficial reasons to utilize it as well. As she discusses the ways the media landscape is being altered by time, she hopes Chautauquans will keep an open mind and feed their curiosity.
“There’s certainly always an impact on the business and the journalists,” she said. “There’s also an impact on the audience too. And I think media companies are always asking the question: ‘What does the audience want?’”
This morning, Stern hopes to reach beyond techies and offer all media consumers insight into what they might be able to expect in terms of technological advancements. She also hopes that Chautauquans find humor in the irony of her speaking to a newspaper about uplifting AI.
“One of my favorite things about coming to Chautauqua is always grabbing the newspaper,” she said. “So, I want to thank you for reading this print paper.”
