Editor At 184-Year-Old Ohio Newspaper Pushes To Let AI Draft News Articles (washingtonpost.com)
- Reference: 0180882022
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/03/02/0440220/editor-at-184-year-old-ohio-newspaper-pushes-to-let-ai-draft-news-articles
- Source link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/03/01/ai-journalism-writing-cleveland-plain-dealer/
> The Plain Dealer, Cleveland's largest newspaper, has begun to feature a new byline. On recent articles about an [1]ice carving festival , a [2]medical research discovery and a [3]roaming pack of chicken-slaying dogs , a reporter's name is paired with the words "Advance Local Express Desk." It means: This article was drafted by artificial intelligence. "This article was produced with assistance from AI tools and reviewed by [4]Cleveland.com staff," reads a note at the bottom of each robot-penned piece, differentiating it from those still written primarily by journalists. The disclosure has [5]done little to stem the backlash that caromed across the news industry after the paper's editor, Chris Quinn, [6]published a Feb. 14 column lamenting that a fresh-out-of-college job applicant withdrew from a reporting fellowship when they found out the position included no writing -- just filing notes to an AI writing tool.
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> "Artificial intelligence is not bad for newsrooms. It's the future of them," Quinn wrote, adding that "by removing writing from reporters' workloads, we've effectively freed up an extra workday for them each week." [...] Quinn, for his part, says his paper's use of AI to find, draft and edit stories is a success story that others must emulate if they want to survive. "It's a tool," he said in a phone interview last week. "If AI can do part of our job, then why not let it -- and have people do the part it can't do?" He added that the paper's embrace of technology -- including using AI to write stories summarizing its reporters' podcasts and its readers' letters to the editor -- is already boosting its bottom line, helping it retain staff at a time when other newspapers are shrinking or even shutting down. Just 130 miles east of Cleveland, the 240-year-old Pittsburgh Post-Gazette said in January that it will close its doors this spring.
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> Quinn, who has led the Plain Dealer's newsroom since 2013, said its newsroom has shrunk from some 400 employees in the late 1990s to just 71 today. Over the past three years, Quinn has implemented a suite of AI tools with various purposes: transcribing local government meetings, scraping municipal websites for story leads, cleaning up typos in story drafts, suggesting headlines and helping reporters draft follow-ups to articles they've already written. He said he is particularly pleased with an AI tool that turns podcasts by the paper's reporters into stories for the website, which he said generated more than 10 million page views last year. He has documented those efforts in letters to readers and sought their feedback. But the paper's latest experiment -- using AI to turn reporters' notes into full story drafts -- has aroused indignation online and anxiety within the paper's ranks.
[1] https://www.cleveland.com/news/2026/02/32nd-medina-ice-festival-to-draw-thousands-to-downtown-this-weekend.html
[2] https://www.cleveland.com/news/2026/02/cleveland-researchers-discover-possible-inherited-mutation-behind-esophageal-cancer.html
[3] https://www.cleveland.com/lake-county/2026/02/roaming-pack-of-dogs-triggers-warning-along-lakeashtabula-county-line.html
[4] https://www.cleveland.com/
[5] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2026/03/01/ai-journalism-writing-cleveland-plain-dealer/
[6] https://www.cleveland.com/news/2026/02/journalism-schools-are-teaching-fear-of-the-future-letter-from-the-editor.html
older (Score:2)
Let's see ... what are the worlds oldest professions? (1) hunter (2) whore (3) priest (4) artist .... Huh. "Scribe" does not make the 1st-four, so humanity can do without them. Well perhaps we missed by one: number five might be ...(5) ??
Re:older (Score:4, Interesting)
"Scribe" may not make the list but "storyteller" certainly would. Written storytelling is just oral storytelling in, well, written form.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes ... tribal storytellers are likely very ancient --- one response put that tome at 60-K BP, but humans are likely very very old (>>300-K) and so would be storytellers. I was thinking that "priest" would also include storyteller and teacher. Whether those two are "professions" ... I don't know. Some "nature films" imply non-human animals *teach* their young/klan certain behaviors; I would feel uncomfortable calling that "professional"... but I'm way over my head. I don't know how b
Re: (Score:2)
it's in the top four estates
Re: (Score:2)
Gatherer would be oldest, hunter next, but teacher has to be the one after that because that's the sole difference between the lineage that eventually became human and all the other great apes. The others all discovered stone technology, cooking, etc, but knowledge is gained and lost at regular intervals. Our line retained and spread that knowledge.
Ship/boat builder and navigator appeared around 1.1 million years ago, priest at around 120,000 years ago, artist around 60,000 years ago, probably around the sa
Re: (Score:2)
Gatherer, then prostitute, then hunter, then more prostitutes, then teacher.
Re: older (Score:1)
I'm pretty sure murder for hire should be close to the top.
Re: older (Score:1)
Pardon me.
Murder for financial gain.
It's the processing location (Score:3)
I don't know what their AI is doing... so just let me subscribe to the raw data feed and let my AI turn it into an article with my style of choice applied to it.
Fall (Score:1)
Anyone read Fall; or, Dodge in Hell - Neal Stephenson? I think that's the one where people who can afford it hire a personal assistant to filter news and internet to remove spam and AI slop to something more usable. (Not the main story, just part of the world) Is this how it starts?
Headline! (Score:2)
New Study Finds AI To Be Accurate, Completely Trust Worthy
A newly released joint study from Harvard, MIT, and UC-Stanford, Oxford University, and the University of Helsinki confirms what has long thought to be true even though we lacked proof. The study, published in the journal Nature, the Lancet, and some others now provides us with the unequivocal proof.
AI has now been proven to always be 100% accurate and unbiased. It is now deemed to be completely trustworthy and, indeed, infallible. Top researchers an
Re: (Score:2)
.........Why do I wonder if you've actually nipped into next week, taken a look, and reported back?
Re: (Score:2)
"Article above written by your friendly AI over lord"
Obligatory (Score:2)
"If you can't be bothered to write it, I can't be bothered to read it."
Re: (Score:1)
The last thing the world needs is more content. What it needs is better content and careful curation.
Shrinking Vision (Score:2)
The key problem is that AI isn't being used to make the final draft faster to write, it's being used to replace people to maintain a status quo.
They could hire more journalists to go out and do fact finding and come up with key quotes and key statements that AI could then weave into the final article. Journalists could spend a lot more time building the structure of a story than banging out the final article. This would also free them up to cover the local stories that often get ignored because there just
Re: (Score:1)
> Most journalism is supposed to be written in a boring, just the facts manner.
Who told you this?
Turns my stomach (Score:2)
Horrendous. It seems to be the norm that enormous resource usage is justified as long as it's cost-friendly. No wonder we have an environmental crisis. I'd suggest boycotting this newspaper immediately.
Removing the human element (Score:2)
As we descend further into writing automation, will the LLMs eventually hit an "echo chamber" of writing styles?
I know exactly when a member on my team uses a LLM because their personally in the writing disappears (sometimes it's a good thing).
Re: (Score:2)
As it stands, AIs are now mostly feeding on AI output. This will only get worse.
In other news.... (Score:2)
1 week: AIs start subscribing to newspapers to stay current
2 weeks: AIs vote AIs to be the best editors
3 weeks: Newspaper sales halve, "no need to panic"
4 weeks: AIs discover lolcat websites
5 weeks: Newspaper goes bankrupt
6 weeks: AIs are now only usable by cats who can't spell
Dumbass chicken and egg problem. (Score:2)
If no one is writing news articles anymore, how will AI know anything to report as news?
Re: Dumbass chicken and egg problem. (Score:2)
You missed the point. Reporters are still supplying content. This is not generation ex nihilo.
AI EDITOR, not reporter is what we need. (Score:3)
The reporter still should write the article - allowing them to pick perspectives and write well.
But the editing of the piece - THAT can be done by AI. Have the AI go through and ensure that the piece is accurate, clear and engaging. The reporter can always object and send it to a human Senior editor if the AI made a mistake in the editing.
Re: (Score:2)
Inclined to agree.
Editing is the more proficient use of an LLM in this instance.
At this point, the writing style of most LLMs I think, has become kind of grating on people. I'm not sure it's a great idea to write articles using it.
That being said, LLMs can be tuned to alter their writing styles.
A new site to the block list (Score:2)
Hmm, another site to add to my block list.
On the bright side, if they are going to focus on AI related articles, then they should be fine losing human readers and just becoming content for AI bots?
readers should consider using AI (Score:3)
We're far to busy to read the slop ourselves