Ohio Newspaper Removes Writing From Reporters' Jobs, Hands It To an 'AI Rewrite Specialist' (cleveland.com) 28
Cleveland.com, the digital arm of Ohio's Plain Dealer newspaper, has removed writing from the workloads of certain reporters and handed that job to what editor Chris Quinn calls an "AI rewrite specialist" who turns reporter-gathered material into article drafts.
The reporters on these beats -- covering Lorain, Lake, Geauga, and most recently Medina County -- are assigned entirely to reporting, spending their time on in-person interviews and meeting sources for coffee. Editors review the AI-produced drafts and reporters get the final say before publication.
Quinn says the arrangement has effectively freed up an extra workday per week for each reporter. The newsroom adopted this model last year to expand local coverage into counties it could no longer staff with full teams, and Quinn described the setup in a February 14 letter after a college journalism student withdrew from a reporting role over the newsroom's use of AI. Quinn blamed journalism schools for the student's reaction, saying professors have repeatedly told students that AI is bad.
The reporters on these beats -- covering Lorain, Lake, Geauga, and most recently Medina County -- are assigned entirely to reporting, spending their time on in-person interviews and meeting sources for coffee. Editors review the AI-produced drafts and reporters get the final say before publication.
Quinn says the arrangement has effectively freed up an extra workday per week for each reporter. The newsroom adopted this model last year to expand local coverage into counties it could no longer staff with full teams, and Quinn described the setup in a February 14 letter after a college journalism student withdrew from a reporting role over the newsroom's use of AI. Quinn blamed journalism schools for the student's reaction, saying professors have repeatedly told students that AI is bad.
Liability time (Score:5, Interesting)
If a newspaper replaces its human writers with AI and publishes an article with a hallucinated and defamatory statement about a person, would they be liable for that?
Yes — in most jurisdictions, the newspaper would likely still be legally liable for defamatory statements published under its name, even if the content was generated by AI
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Editors review the AI-produced drafts and reporters get the final say before publication.
So, whoever signed off on this would be liable. Seems perfectly reasonable to me. This sounds like a good use of a LLM.
Re: Liability time (Score:5, Insightful)
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Monkeys (Score:2)
What they should do is get the story from a ouija board, type it up with a dozen rhesus monkeys, and edit by a 10 year old with crayons.
Re:Monkeys (Score:4, Insightful)
works for Truth Social. Except RFK's worm replaces the Ouija board.
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90% of all media is billionaire owned (Score:5, Interesting)
At this point the associate press is still mostly allowed to do journalism. Mostly. NPR is trying but obviously they are being sabotaged by the administration for what I should think are blatantly obvious reasons even to a third grader.
Before muskrat bought it there was a ton of real journalism on Twitter and a lot of journalists doing good work there and making a living. I don't think it should take a genius to figure out why he bought it. This is practically wumbology. The study of wumbo
They're right (Score:3)
professors have repeatedly told students that AI is bad.
Whether you like AI or not, if your profession is about to be obsoleted by AI, AI Is factually bad for you.
Beyond that, it's up to you to decide if it's worth paying a talented human writer to report on local events in a local rag. Most of those newspapers are strictly utilitarian and simply inform the locals of what's happening in their communities. I've never seen any of them dabble in gonzo.
And well, journalism is like football: most professional footballers play in minor leagues and don't earn much, and only a vanishingly small minority earns top dollar playing incredible matches watched by millions.
High-flying journalists writing for classy newspapers will most certainly keep writing their own stuff. But the mundane will probably be taken over by AI because mediocre is good enough for the money.
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"Good enough" is exactly the reason that AI is upending the world of white collar work. It might not replace a skilled and experienced employee, but it's good enough.
Re:They're right (Score:4, Interesting)
> "Good enough" is exactly the reason that AI is upending the world of white collar work. It might not replace a skilled and experienced employee, but it's good enough.
I don't necessarily have a problem with that. The problem is, skilled workers only become skilled after being inexperienced for a while and gaining experience. If you cut junior, unskilled workers from the job market, you won't have skilled workers in a few years.
In other words, company that adopt AI to avoid paying unskilled labor are shooting themselves in the foot.
A newspaper gasps a few more times! (Score:3)
The Death of Static History. (Score:3)
then dies!
Historians will yearn for the days when history was merely static documents told by the victorious and not modified and re-written by politik every other week.
I would say “mark my words” but what’s the fucking point when all you need is a delete button.
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Who's reading? (Score:3)
Local news should be told by a human who writes like a human. The relationship between the journalist and the reader is critically important. Good writers can be informative and newsworthy while also having their own style. For example, lots of people write movie reviews, but there was only one Roger Ebert. His reviews communicated something more than just 'here's this movie about XYZ and it was good / bad.'
Otherwise, go away (which it will, because no one will pay for this AI slop garbage).
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Local news should be told by a human who writes like a human
A lot of small-town local news is things like the police blotter, community calendars, school lunch menus, and the like that could be done by a computer in the pre-"AI"-era.
Now things like investigative journalism or on-the-scene reporting of actual news events are better done (for now) with a human touch.
This actually makes some sense (Score:2)
I would've had the reporters rather than the editors do the first review though. They would have a better sense of whether the AI-generated output reflected their input.
Or, to put it another way, the paper should've trained the reporters to use AI as a story-writing tool, with the expectation that if the AI was as good as it is purported to be,* the AI's first draft will be "almost good enough" to go to the editor for final review.
Reality check: Things rarely go according to plan. The AI probably won't b
Newsflash! (Score:2)
Title games? (Score:2)
Maybe it's a gimmick to either make the job sound more modern and/or an excuse to pay them less.
Remember "sanitation coordinator" instead of "janitor"? Or "agitation engineer" instead of "troll"?
wait a few years (Score:3)
The reporters will have lost the skill of extracting a story that provides any insight. Instead, the readers will be treated to AI slop of anecdotes. The questions really are: will readers notice? will they care? how many will realize they are being fed poop and go elsewhere for actual news?
totally makes sense (Score:2, Interesting)
The reporters gather information. "doing in-person interviews, meeting sources for coffee. That’s where real stories emerge, and they’re returning with more ideas than we can handle", it sounds like a big plus to me.
The reporter can be out there looking for news. The AI takes the workload of writing up all that information off their backs, I don't see a problem there. Review it for accuracy of course, but AI is very good at summarizing content.
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Writing helps us process information that we've gathered. A better writer is a better thinker. We've already lost much of our physical ability by having machines do the work for us (driving, instead of walking or biking). Now we're starting to delegate mental skills to machines.
On the other hand, ancient civilizations, like that of classical Greece, achieved a high level of culture with much less writing as we have available today (because writing materials were so much more expensive). But they used
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>> A better writer is a better thinker.
A fair statement, but journalism appears to be struggling economically these days so cost-cutting may be the highest priority.
I alternate between a couple of local evening news stations on TV. One of them has the traditional expensive studio with a news anchorperson who hands off to on-site reporters or pre-recorded clips, a format that has endured for many decades. The other one is The Scripps Newsgroup which has jettisoned the studio, they operate on a shoestri