Media executive urges NIJ students to embrace AI

The founder of The Cable Online Newspaper, Simon Kolawole, has urged students of the Nigerian Institute of Journalism, Lagos, to embrace artificial intelligence tools in preparation for the profession’s future.

Kolawole made this appeal while delivering a lecture at the NIJ’s monthly professional forum in Ogba, Lagos State, on Wednesday.

The forum, a regular initiative of the institution, aims to bridge the gap between academia and the industry and equip students for successful careers in journalism.

Speaking on the topic “Journalism in the Age of AI,” the media entrepreneur highlighted AI’s transformative impact on the profession and warned that journalists who fail to adopt the technology risk being left behind.

“It is better we realise the usage of all these AI tools and begin to prepare for it. There is still a future in journalism, and there’s AI in the future of journalism,” he stated.

Kolawole further stressed the necessity of AI’s adaptation, noting that for anyone “to survive and thrive, you must key in. We are now in the AI age; it has officially started.”

Reflecting on the evolution of research in journalism, he recalled the challenges faced before the advent of the Internet, saying, “We know what we went through as journalists to research a story. In those days, we would cut out newspapers on different subjects and paste them on paper.

“If you were writing on education, you would go to the library, take out these papers, and begin to read them one after the other to gather relevant information for your stories.

“You might spend two hours doing this. But with Google, you only need to type in the information you need, and it will provide the relevant details for your story.”