WORKSLOP
Sept 29, 2025
Felix Armand Heullant
We define workslop as AI generated work content that masquerades as good work, but lacks the substance to meaningfully advance a given task.
This is it. My personal status quo after having played around with quite a few tools to: come up with ideas, help structure, sum up, research, write, produce and edit. Stuff.
Agent Mode sounds so promising. The machine is starting this and that and doing something (it takes ages, just like loading a game on a C64 or connecting to the internet with a modem) and then - hey presto - here is your text, your chart, your presentation. But they lack – the certain something.
This is the moment where people tell you that you are not using the tools in a clever and smart way. You need to tweak that prompt, turning it into a complex plan for a future war and the machine will finally obey and do what you want it to. Not sure about that. Well, maybe i am just bad at prompting.
There are endless tools. The “let me google that for you” has turned into “there is an ai for that”. Indeed. And there are newsletters for these tools too. And there are books, and podcasts, and experts and new tools, and new newsletters and new experts.
I Tested How Well AI Tools Work for Journalism, writes Emmy award-winning investigative reporter and assistant professor of journalism at New York University Hilke Schellmann (Columbia Journalism Review). Her conclusion: more hype than help.
And of course this will change. We are in the midst of a heated hype-cycle where - once again - the future is already here, just not evenly distributed. We are in a FAFO phase. And these are exciting, frustrating, and strenuous.
I am currently reading Mike Reilley’s Substack Journalist’s Toolbox AI which is pretty worthwhile. And a bunch of german ones:
- https://gregorschmalzried.blog/
- KI und Medien - jede Woche eine neue Case Study
- https://tooltime.substack.com/
- https://storycodes.substack.com/
- https://aijournalist.de/
- Generative AI in the Newsroom
Books on the list
- The Journalist’s Toolbox A Guide to Digital Reporting and AI
- Data + Journalism A Story-Driven Approach to Learning Data Reporting
Custom GPTs aka Tiny Tools
I am basically just collecting stuff here. Will add. Thx. Ciao.
AI as normal technology
Reflection is one thing, but reflection from a fool is cruel