Kaitlyn Farley

I attribute my success to staying curious and understanding that perfection really shouldn't be the goal. I was a first-generation college student and didn't have an example of what college would look like, but I still went that route even though I didn't necessarily have a blueprint for that. I've learned that anything related to humans is not going to be perfect, but what you can do is better - you can always be better. That's actually kind of why we created Better Magazine, to help people understand that the goal is not to be perfect. I'm a huge planner, but you have to be able to not really freak out when things don't go according to plan, and 9 times out of 10 it will not go according to plan. The ability to pivot and not be too precious about following your plan step-by-step is something you really need, especially in this world of journalism and content. You need to be quick on your feet and able to adapt. Really just living by that philosophy of staying curious, being willing to learn, and knowing that when you hit obstacles, this is temporary.

The first thing I would say is fret not about AI taking over these jobs. I actually worked with companies training AI for a while, and I can tell you they were nowhere close to taking over these jobs. We're actually starting to see that now as companies that implemented AI policies are kind of retracting and going back to having real hands and real eyes behind their stories. Even Google Analytics' latest algorithm update has an AI detector in it, so when it crawls your site, if it detects above 50-60% AI, that will automatically hurt your rankings. I think you're going to see a shift away from AI again. In the meantime, the name of the game is just getting your stuff out there and being connected with people in your field on LinkedIn, looking for freelance opportunities to get your foot in the door - that's how I got started at Media Feed. I know it's not ideal, but that's just the reality of the market right now. I would suggest keeping in there and staying curious too. Be curious about SEO, about CMSs, about all these things that may be more adjacent to journalism. When you've researched them and built your skills in these subsets, that's really going to boost your resume as well. There are all sorts of free things online right now where you can learn how to do a gap analysis and things like that. Take advantage of this time to learn as much as you can, because it's only going to help your resume.

The biggest challenge right now is that the job market is not great, especially in the space between content and journalism where there's a great shift happening as companies decide how they're going to use AI and how many writers they want to have on staff versus how many are just going to be AI. However, I see this as temporary. Companies that implemented AI policies are starting to retract and go back to real writers, and Google's latest algorithm update now includes an AI detector that will hurt your rankings if it detects above 50-60% AI content on your site. So I think we're going to see a shift away from AI again and back toward valuing human writers and real editorial content.