It was in 1991 when I joined United News of Bangladesh, popularly known as UNB, as a trainee sub-editor, with a passion to pursue a career in English journalism despite not even having the skill to type.

I started my journey in journalism at UNB, South Asia's first fully digitalised private-sector wire service, without a salary or even conveyance, as the then Chief of Correspondents (CoC) found me less worthy of the job. I did not mind, though the way he spoke to me hurt me. The following day, I started learning to type and acquired the required skills within a week. And then things changed dramatically.

We used to receive either handwritten or traditionally typed news stories from UNB correspondents across the country. We had to reshape those stories into the recognised news format, following a global practice. The situation in newsrooms is no longer the same as the one we saw and worked in decades ago.

From a slow, localised and print-based system, the news media industry has transformed dramatically and at an unbelievable pace, driven by technological breakthroughs. Technology has changed the way we gather information, produce and transmit news and consume it.

Before modern technology, news travelled through the words of mouths and handwritten letters. In the age of print, from the 15th to the 19th century, journalism took a major leap forward. Journalism students know very well that Johannes Gutenberg invented the movable-type printing press around 1455, enabling people to produce written texts in huge volumes.

Inventors like Friedrich Koenig industrialised the printing press by using steam power in the early 1800s, paving the way for newspapers to be printed faster and distributed daily across wider areas. Then came the telegraph in the 1800s, a system that sent electrical signals over wires and surprised the world by enabling media houses to transmit news across oceans and continents in minutes.

The world saw a major paradigm shift in the 1900s with the focus moving from texts to audios and videos. It has, in fact, opened the door for all to be part of history with radio getting popular in the 1920s and television in the 1950s. And then cable TV emerged in the 1980s to rule the game.

The digital revolution of the 21st century further broke the monopoly of traditional news networks. The wave of rapid change continued through the 1990s and early 2000s with websites, emails and digital platforms.

With the emergence of social media and smartphones, it was the print media industry that took the hit, as readers started receiving information free and instantly, showing less interest in subscribing to newspapers.

Now, everybody is a journalist, thanks to Facebook and X, formerly Twitter. Today, writing an ordinary text, capturing a video, or going live, and sharing those on social media is a matter of minutes and this has posed a major challenge to the mainstream media everywhere.

Finally came the artificial intelligence (AI), the real game-changer, with newsrooms across the world increasingly using it to write data-driven articles, translate content and perform other relevant tasks.

Surprisingly, AI has made newsroom life easier, particularly where bilingual practice is common. Translation work is no longer a major issue; it is now just a click away. A newsroom working with a small team finds it very handy, as the news editor is less burdened with handling a huge volume of work. And copy editors with little or no command of languages have now started thinking of themselves as master writers. Is this a good sign or a bad one?

Journalists who started their careers through manual practice developed their own command and mastery over news editing, and it was a privilege for them to read books and build their own world of knowledge. Now, they have found AI to be a useful tool to add value to their work and speed up newsroom activities.

But for newcomers, I think, this is not good news at all, as they may miss the experience and discipline of manual practice. AI and digital platforms have also taken away some of their opportunities to go through the dedicated process of gaining wisdom, learning news structures and developing professional acumen.

AI-driven technology has opened a new door and, I believe, we will continue to see its further wonders changing the world in the years ahead and challenging the creative capacity of ordinary people. The question now is: how ready are we to adapt to this evolving situation in journalism and stay relevant?

Collective efforts need to be made both from the media entrepreneurs and journalists right now to address the evolving issues, so that wisdom does not get lost in the chaos.

Mahfuzur Rahman, Speech Writer to the Honourable Prime Minister