For a long time, we were told the editor was a dying breed. The internet rewarded volume and speed. The red pen started to feel like a relic. And for a few years, that was true. We traded intentionality for output, and the world didn’t revolt.
Then AI arrived.
Now we’re drowning in synthetic enthusiasm, so ubiquitous it even has a name: AI slop. If you’ve spent five minutes in your inbox lately, you know the sound. Hyper-emotional manifestos. Urgent sales pitches. Thought leadership that feels oddly airless. The copy is technically polished, utterly soulless, and kind of exhausting.
But slop does not happen because AI cannot write better. It happens because the people prompting it are not giving it a reason to produce something worth reading.
Which means editorial skills have a mission again. Hooray.
If you want to get the best from AI, you have to stop treating it like a search engine and start treating it like a first draft. And as any editor will tell you, every first draft needs a deep read.
Here is how to move from requester to writer-editor in five steps.
1. Don’t Request a Topic. Assign a Story.
In my glossies days, a story did not start with “Write about Thanksgiving.” It started when a writer noticed something in the world and pitched an insight. We’d find the spark for the magazine together, and only then would I make the assignment.
To get anything useful out of AI, you have to bring that same rigor to the prompt.
AI cannot notice anything on its own. That part is still yours. So do not hand it a topic. Bring it an observation, a point of view, a specific story you want to tell. If you are fuzzy on the why, it will default to the safest version of the what. Every time.
The amateur: Write a post about why newsletters are popular.
The editor: I’m noticing people are fleeing social media for the intimacy of the inbox. Write a piece arguing that the newsletter is the new digital life raft.
2. Donate Your Real Life to the Prompt
AI defaults to the internet’s consensus. No editor ever went looking for that. We wanted the interesting, the up-next, the counterintuitive thing nobody had quite articulated yet.
Since the model has no lived experience, you have to donate yours to the prompt. Bring the client meeting that went sideways, the gut feeling you have about a trend, the detail too specific to be generic.
If you do not bring the texture of real life, you will get a polished uncanny-valley summary of what everyone else already thinks. Recognizable. Forgettable.
3. Define the House Voice
At Gourmet, we had a very specific house voice: literate, sophisticated, deeply knowledgeable. A Thanksgiving assignment was not “how to roast a turkey.” It was something more like Ballotine of Turkey with Foie Gras, Truffles, and a Cognac-Cream Sauce: A History of Family and Farm. The recipe was almost beside the point. The reading experience was the thing.
At Bed Bath & Beyond? Same bird. Different contract with the reader: How to Defrost a Frozen Turkey. Clear, useful, done.
When you prompt AI, you are defining the rules of your own house. And you do not have to settle for algorithmic beige. If you want the model to sound like you, show it what that looks like. Upload a style guide. Give it a piece that captures your tone. Be explicit about what you do not want to hear.
You are training the junior writer on your staff to meet your standard.
4. Respect the Space
In print, space on the page was literal money. An assignment came with constraints. Was this a 150-word front-of-book item or a 3,000-word feature? Those limits shaped the story.
Prompting works the same way.
Tell the AI what kind of piece it is writing and how much room it has to do it. Define the reader’s mental state. Are they a sophisticated Gourmet cook looking for history and atmosphere, or a busy Bed Bath & Beyond shopper who just needs to know which pan will not stick?
If you do not respect the reader’s time and attention, the AI will ramble.
5. Use the Red Pen
One of the hardest things for me to learn as a young magazine editor was just how much work a first draft requires.
At Gourmet, at least four editors touched a story before it went to press. At Bed Bath & Beyond, the process involved editors, legal, and marketing. Good work was never the result of one clean pass. It was the result of people being awake to where the story could be sharper, clearer, or more alive than it was on the page.
That is still true with AI.
Use the tool to be some of those extra eyes. Ask it to tighten a section, surface repetition, test a headline, or point out where the argument goes soft. But remember: the editor still gets final cut.
Rewriting is writing. The red pen is part of the job.
The Red-Pen Renaissance
For years, speed won.
Now speed is free, and it is everywhere.
When anyone can generate a thousand words in ten seconds, the world does not need more content. It needs better eyes. It needs people who know the difference between a how-to and a think piece. It needs people who can spot the spark in a pile of slop and turn it into something worth reading.
You are not being replaced by a machine. You are being promoted to editor-in-chief of an infinite, if occasionally airless, writing staff.
So grab your red pen, keep your standards high, and start writing the assignment letters they deserve. The inbox has never needed you more.
