You’re reading a blog post by Mike Pearl based on a news report by TheWrap’s Corbin Boliz about AI-generated news articles. While my hyperlink to his work is mandatory and standard, if Boliz is like most writers, he’ll probably take umbrage when this article’s byline says “Reporting by Corbin Boliz with assistance from Mike Pearl.”
And if I were not a human blogger, but a piece of AI software, would it be better or worse?
According to Bolles and The Wrap, a new piece of cloud-based AI technology is being introduced into the newsrooms of the McClatchy Media family of newspapers, and some journalists are being forced to take partial bylines, even when the AI system “wrote” their article.
equipment, which is called Content Scaling Agent (CSA) enables editors to create summaries of different lengths for any story. I’m imagining the idea of enlarging or shrinking a JPEG, but applying it to a piece of text. But to quote TheWrap, CSA could also create “editions targeted at specific audiences.” TheWrap says the page of internal information reviewed by Boiles calls it “a writing partner that handles the mechanical work of content optimization so journalists can focus on what’s important: decision making, voice, and storytelling.”
TheWrap links to an example: an excerpt in Pennsylvania’s Center Daily Times, credited with the following format: “Reporting by [author redacted]. Built with AI assistance.” AI-generated articles are two short paragraphs of prose, followed by the headline “Here are the highlights” and then five bullet points. There’s a link to the full, human-written story in the middle of the article, and it’s only 1,200 words long and includes six data-heavy graphics.
According to TheWrap, the Center Daily Times is non-union. The Sacramento Bee, The Wrap says, is a unionized publication, and it has left the writer out entirely. Its byline format reads “Edited by.” [editor redacted]. The story was created with the help of AI.” The unionized Miami Herald’s CSA byline uses the format “Created using AI, based on original work” [author redacted],” which uses the author’s name, but does not appear to say they asked for “AI assistance.”
At a McClatchy staff meeting cited by TheWrap, Kathy Vetter, the company’s chief of staff for local news, reportedly responded to a question by saying, “If their contract doesn’t have the ability to remove their byline, we’re going to use their name.”
TheWrap says that last week, complaints filed by unions at the McClatchy-owned Miami Herald, Sacramento Bee and Kansas City Star allege that McClatchy’s The CSA was implemented in violation of contract provisions stating that unions must be notified before “major technical changes”.
McClatchy did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday evening. We’ll update this article if we receive any.
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