Editor At 184-Year-Old Ohio Newspaper Pushes To Let AI Draft News Articles

Source: Slashdot

AI Drafting at The Plain Dealer

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Washington Post: The Plain Dealer, Cleveland’s largest newspaper, has begun to feature a new byline. On recent articles about an ice carving festival, a medical research discovery and a 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.

A note at the bottom of each robot‑penned piece reads: “This article was produced with assistance from AI tools and reviewed by Cleveland.com staff,” differentiating it from stories still written primarily by journalists. The disclosure has done little to stem the backlash that caromed across the news industry (Washington Post) after the paper’s editor, Chris Quinn, published a Feb. 14 column lamenting that a fresh‑out‑of‑college job applicant withdrew from a reporting fellowship when they learned the position included no writing—just filing notes to an AI writing tool (Cleveland.com).

Editor Chris Quinn’s Perspective

“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 frames the paper’s use of AI to find, draft, and edit stories as a success story that others must emulate to survive. He describes AI as “a tool” and argues: “If AI can do part of our job, then why not let it—and have people do the part it can’t do?”

He also notes 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 and helping it retain staff at a time when other newspapers are shrinking or shutting down. For context, the 240‑year‑old Pittsburgh Post‑Gazette announced in January that it will close its doors this spring.

Impact on the Newsroom

• Quinn has led the Plain Dealer’s newsroom since 2013.
• The newsroom has shrunk from roughly 400 employees in the late 1990s to just 71 today.
• Over the past three years, Quinn has implemented a suite of AI tools for:
  • Transcribing local government meetings.
  • Scraping municipal websites for story leads.
  • Cleaning up typos in story drafts.
  • Suggesting headlines.
  • Helping reporters draft follow‑ups to articles they’ve already written.

He highlighted an AI tool that turns podcasts by the paper’s reporters into stories for the website, which generated more than 10 million page views last year. Quinn has documented these efforts in letters to readers and sought their feedback.

Industry Reaction

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. The broader industry backlash underscores ongoing debates about the role of AI in journalism and the balance between automation and human editorial judgment.