730: A Morning Paper Published Just for Me
One book that has been taking up a fair bit of space in my head lately is Tom Rosenstiel’s The Next Journalism. One idea in particular has stayed with me: what if we stopped thinking of journalism simply as a product and started thinking of it as a service?
The question then is no longer just: What news should we produce today? It also becomes: What do people need from journalism to help them navigate their lives?
Rosenstiel argues for a shift from a journalism of attention to a journalism of value. In a digital economy where almost everything is competing for our attention, journalism should offer something more useful than yet another reason to click on the next headline.
That idea eventually collided with a little AI experiment of mine.
What if the audience were just one person?
My morning information needs are actually pretty simple.
I want to know what’s on my calendar. I want to know the one important thing that happened in Indonesia while I was asleep. I still want a handful of other headlines, but I don’t necessarily need an essay about each one.
And because much of my work—and curiosity—revolves around media, journalism, storytelling, podcasting, books, creativity and, more recently, coaching, I’d also like to discover a few things that I might genuinely enjoy reading. Not 30 links I’ll never have time to open.Just the good stuff.
Which got me wondering: if AI knows enough about our needs and interests, could it create a morning briefing for an audience of exactly one?
So I started experimenting with ChatGPT with this initial prompt:
Every morning at 7:30, show my Google calendar agenda, look at what happened overnight, pick one Indonesian story as the lead, give me five other headlines, and then find a few things it thought I might enjoy reading.
At the very end, give me one coaching-style question to think about over coffee. Something relevant to me.
Oddly enough, that has become one of my favourite parts.
After catching up with what’s happening out there and looking at everything waiting for me on the calendar, the briefing turns my attention inward for a moment:
How am I showing up this morning, and how do I want to move through the day?
No advice. No motivational quote.
Just one decent question to sit with over morning coffee.
Personalisation is more than recommendation
We’ve been living with personalisation for years. Spotify picks our music, YouTube recommends videos, TikTok decides what comes next.
But most of those systems are essentially trying to answer the same question:
What is most likely to keep this person consuming?
If we approach journalism as a service, perhaps the question becomes: What would actually be useful to this person today?
It sounds like a subtle distinction. I think it’s an important one. Because personalised journalism shouldn’t mean that everyone gets their own version of reality, with facts tailored to their preferences. That would be dangerous.
The facts—and the journalism behind them—should still come from the same public sphere. What becomes personal is the service layer: what matters to me, what comes first, how much depth I need, when I receive it, and even how it is presented.
In other words, AI may not have to replace the newsroom.
It could though become the interface between journalism and one human being.
Then I became a very fussy editor
The first version of my morning briefing was, unsurprisingly, nowhere near what I wanted.
Too much information, messy layout, fonts too small, white space in all the wrong places.
So I began doing something very familiar to anyone who has ever worked as an editor.
“Lose this.”
“One lead story is enough.”
“Make this section two columns so it reads better on a phone.”
“This kind of story isn’t for me. Find something else.”
“Move the white space to the back. Add ruled lines like a notebook. I want somewhere to write.”
That was when I realised something else: personalisation isn’t simply about AI knowing what I like.
It also has to learn how I want the world edited for me.
New technology, very old format
After several rounds of tinkering, the experiment finally found its shape.
I called it Tujuh Tiga Puluh, Indonesian for Seven Thirty.
Every morning at 7:30, I now receive a briefing that is part personalised news, part agenda reminder, and part morning journal.
It tells me what has been happening in the world, reminds me what is waiting for me that day, then gives me one question and a little empty space to notice what is happening inside my own head.
And because I belong to a generation that still has a sentimental attachment to print, I had the whole thing turned into a two-page PDF designed like a newspaper. The second page even has ruled lines where I can scribble my thoughts.
There is something wonderfully ironic about that.
I’m using one of the newest technologies around to produce something in one of the oldest formats I know:
a morning newspaper!
Perhaps this is one tiny glimpse of the Next Journalism Rosenstiel is talking about.
Reporters still report, newsrooms still verify, journalists still investigate, cultivate sources and do the difficult work that journalism requires.
But the last mile between all that journalism and the individual reader may be about to change.
Every morning, I now get to play with a small experiment in what that might look like.
It’s called Tujuh Tiga Puluh.
The editor is AI, the journalism still comes from journalists, and there is one extremely fussy editor-in-chief: That would be me. (Hey, it’s my newspaper. I can do whatever I want with it.)
A newspaper from the future?
Reading my strange little morning paper also sent me down another rabbit hole. Maybe I was overthinking it. Maybe I was getting a little too excited about my own experiment.
But I found myself wondering: Could this be what a newspaper of the future looks like?
I can imagine journalists and news organisations continuing to do what they are supposed to do: report rigorously, seek out different sides of a story, serve their readers, and uphold the principles that have guided good journalism for decades.
But on top of that, perhaps they could offer a layer of service that turns the newspaper into something more than a personalised news aggregator.
Something genuinely personal.
It might know what matters to you that morning. It might remind you what’s on your agenda. It might even leave a little space for reflection before the day gets going.
Possible? I don’t know.
But every morning, I feel as if I’m getting a tiny preview of that future.
At 7:30, my newspaper arrives, delivered by a paperboy called ChatGPT, with a circulation of exactly one.
I read it over coffee. I scribble on it. Then I keep each edition. And I love the thought that, over time, I might end up with an archive that is two things at once: a record of what was happening in the world, and a record of what was happening in my life.
Is that the future? Who knows.
But why not try making one for yourself. It’s surprisingly fun.
Want to see an English issue of my Tujuh Tiga Puluh? Download a sample here. Some of the links are in Indonesian, but hopefully you'll get the point.
Cheers,
Tangsel, October 3rd, 2026
