PETALING JAYA: Odds are that many journalists at a Singapore company will soon lose their jobs, but a report says the job cuts are a good sign that Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) is “modernising” in its efforts to remain competitive.

Asean Today said SPH’s decision to trim down its journalists was “a leap towards the new era of journalism”.

“In the hyper-competitive world of news reporting, a failure to innovate is a death sentence.

“The SPH message is clear: it wants to keep Singapore at the forefront of modern journalism, and that means reducing jobs and embracing technology,” it said today.

SPH, which began retrenching staff earlier this month, is Southeast Asia’s biggest newspaper publisher and owner of the 172-year-old Straits Times daily.

According to reports, the company intends to axe 230 staff members which will reduce employees in core media divisions by 15%.

However, Asean Today also noted that SPH was not in financial distress, as the company had recorded a surge in profits for 2017 of S$350.1 million.

“To stay relevant and profitable, SPH needs to keep up with consumer trends and create stimulating content for the new generation. To do this, it needs to embrace AI solutions,” it said.

Pointing out that 85% of the population now refer to online sources for their news, the report added that such platforms were not conducive to long articles.

“Visual journalism is becoming the new norm,” it said, adding that this means there is less need for actual journalists.

Today, AI bots can even write news articles for companies, a technique already being used by the Associated Press for its stories on corporate financial quarterly earnings, the report said.

The use of natural language generation (NLG) technology means that human input is only required to select relevant data sets, while other types of software can select images to accompany the article.

“The future of journalism is quickly advancing,” the report said, quoting co-founder of Narrative Science Kris Hammond who estimated that computers would be responsible for 90% of news content by the mid-2020s.

According to the report, last year SPH invested S$6.8 million in Brand New Media Singapore (BNMS), a leading video content company.

This is in line with the steady rise in the consumption of online videos, the company was reported as saying.

“Other companies are looking to transition to stay ahead of the industry and increase revenues,” the report added.