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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
4 April-May
April-May PB
Issue 85
April-May 2025
Chllenging he
endemiclly
complcen nd
ohers by he cue
promoion of
equliy,
susinbiliy nd
ccounbiliy
ONLINE
www.villgemgzine.ie
@VillgeMgIRE
EDITOR
Michel Smih
edior@villgemgzine.ie
INTERN
Jes Pluchowsk
DESIGN AND PRODUCTION
Lenny Rooney
ADVERTISING
sles@villge.ie
PRINTERS
Boylns, Droghed,
Co Louh
VILLAGE IS PUBLISHED BY
Ormond Quy Publishing
Ormond Quy Upper,
Dublin
EDITORIAL
TRY AGAIN
I
T’S BEEN a long four months since
our last publication. Some of that
is because it’s not clear what the
future is for a magazine like
Village.
The first suggestion comes from
Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Will news magazines be better if
they use a lot of AI-generated material,
Village asked.
ChatGPT answered:
It depends on how they use it.
ChatGPT can help with speed,
summarization, and generating
drafts, but relying too much on
AI-generated content can reduce
originality, depth, and investigative
quality.
Pros:
• Faster content production
• Summarization of complex topics
•
Assistance with language and
structure
Cons:
•
Risk of factual errors or outdated
info
• Lack of investigative depth
• Potential loss of unique journalistic
voice
Magazines that blend AI for
efficiency while keeping human
editorial oversight will likely benefit,
but full AI reliance could lower
credibility and engagement.
Village didn’t like the spelling of
summarization, the use of likely, And
wasn’t too sure about the style of so
much bold and bulleting; but can live
with the message. Anyway, Artificial
Intelligence is changing the nature of
journalism. It’s a threat to pro forma
journalism but Village prides itself on
accuracy, investigative depth and its
unique journalistic quality so, unlike
some other news organs in Ireland, we
should be…ok with AI.
AI can, and is, helping underfunded
organs like Village to save time and
energy by compiling and checking
facts tentatively but instantly, and
cheaply.
It should be taken as read that, from
now, Village’s journalism will be
liberally AI-fed.
But if AI isn’t necessarily a problem
for Village, other developments are.
Long-form
journalism bores most
people and reminds them of their
compromised attention spans: TL;DR.
People whose attention spans have
been reduced by social media, not you
of course, increasingly prefer shorter
pieces and soundbytes. In March, the
FT ran a piece, ‘Have humans passed
peak brain power?”, suggesting the
average person’s ability to process
inforemation has been declining since
2010. Too bad, Village will continue,
on the premise that some issues and
ideas need space, and will attract a
readership, whatever the vogue.
Village has long since decided that
the quality of long-form journalism in
Ireland, of investigations and of
challenging analysis is almost
universally poor. That’s what aords it
its market.
Print journalism
is wasteful since
online journalism uses less paper, is
accessible forever and is mostly free.
While fully paid up to sustainability,
information is important and justifies,
preferably frugal, consumption of
paper — which can also last forever.
Village is trying to address this by
avoiding a paywall but asking users of
our website, www.village.ie, to buy
subscriptions or memberships. It’s the
Guardian model.
Online journalism is more
immediate and can be in real time.
Village is attempting to deal with
this by making the print magazine less
frequent and so better quality for
complex issues and ideas, but freeing
time for more aggressive attempts to
hold power to account in paywall-free
online investigations, like those
underway for some time by the
energetic Ditch, our somewhat
effective, and therefore irritating
competitor. This, for Village, which
has a much smaller budget even than
the Ditch, has moved frustratingly
slowly.
Only media that deliver a valuable
service, like the F
armer’s Journal
and
the
FT
, will survive,
Village
will never
make any money.
Village is parsimoniously run and
poised to leap if ever it becomes clear
how it can tout its message more
successfully and more dynamically.
The past does not determine the
future.
And then there is the reality that
Podcasts are more user-friendly than
boring reading
Fine but it’s more dicult to digest
detail that’s oral rather than in writing,
and a lot of Podcast time is wasted in
discourse and conversational
rigmarole.
Fundamentally, with Trump and the
global rightward surge it is clear the
world has turned away from tedious
old equality and sustainability,
Village
’s mantras.
Well, Village can prove life is better
with equality and sustainability,
indeed tries to advance the case in
every article. Meanwhile it awaits the
backlash against the monstrous move
towards even greater inequality,
licence and profligacy. Wellbeing,
equality of outcome, sustainability.
Village is a slave to its mantra, not
to vested interests. Unlike the
Washington Post, it won’t be shifting
to defending only personal liberties
and free markets, whatever the ruling
régime demands.
And the more the unthinking turn to
selfishness and short-termism, the
more important is it to keep a more
decent, humane and outward-facing
worldview alive and accessible.
But how can you keep up with the
Trump whirlwind — his breakings and
deceits; and his local acolytes? It’s
depraving to treat his policies
seriously when they are intended to
annoy thoughtful people and are not
serious.
True, but nobody said you have to
address Trumpism poe-faced or
slavishly. Magazines like Village
should be pursuing eective ways of
countering incipient fascism and all its
brutal outworkings.
It doesn’t matter anyway.
It does. Inequality and
unsustainability breed fascism, and
environmental and climate collapse,
leading to wars and death. The
agenda is existential.
Anyway what we mean to say is
that we thank you for your patience,
and ask for acceptance that it has
been dicult to find a format and a
voice.
That last bit could not possibly
have been written by AI. And so we
persevere, ever tried, ever failed —
with our glorious, if currently
anachronistic, aim to challenge and
inspire.
‘Try again. Fail again’
