McClatchy, the newspaper chain behind publications such as The Sacramento Bee, The Miami Herald and The Idaho Statesman, has begun using a new artificial intelligence tool that can summarize traditional articles and offer different versions for different audiences.
His journalists are not happy about it.
Journalists in many of the company’s newsrooms are now refusing to sign articles created with the new tool, meaning those articles will be published with a generic credit rather than with a journalist’s name, as is usual. They are also labeled AI-assisted.
“We don’t want to put our byline on stories that we didn’t actually write, even if they’re based on our work,” said Ariane Lange, an investigative reporter at the Sacramento Bee and vice president of the Sacramento Bee News Guild. “That in itself sounds like a lie.”
The journalists’ strike is one of the sharpest conflicts yet between journalists and their companies over the use of AI. Debates on this topic are taking place in newsrooms across the country, as editors experiment with new AI tools to streamline work that previously took hours, and some even use them to write full articles.
Many journalists are adamant about putting guardrails in place for the use of AI in reporting and news production.
McClatchy’s new tool, developed in-house and called Content Scaling Agent, is used to some extent across all of McClatchy’s newsrooms, according to a person briefed on the rollout. McClatchy, which was sold to hedge fund Chatham Asset Management in 2020 following its bankruptcy, operates 30 newspapers in 14 states.
A representative for McClatchy did not respond to requests for comment. But executives promoted the tool internally as a way to increase the number of articles published and, ultimately, gain new subscribers.
“We need more items and more inventory,” Eric Nelson, vice president of local news, told staffers during a March 17 meeting, according to a transcript reviewed by The New York Times. “It’s a tool through which we can leverage our strong content and find new audiences, angles and entry points. »
Mr Nelson said using journalists’ bylines on AI-generated articles was a way to show “authority” on Google so the search engine ranked articles higher in results. He also said the company was experimenting with using journalists’ notes to create stories.
“Journalists who embrace and experiment with this tool are going to win,” Nelson said during the meeting. “Rebel journalists will fall behind. »
An AI-generated article published Wednesday in the Miami Herald about a court ruling in favor of a cancer patient is one example. It was credited with a tagline that read: “Produced using AI, based on the original work by Michelle Marchante.” » A footnote said the article was produced “with the help of a proprietary tool powered by artificial intelligence and using our own content originally reported, written and published. It was reviewed and edited by our journalists.”
The Wrap previously reported on internal tensions at McClatchy.
McClatchy’s public AI policy states that the company uses AI tools to summarize articles to “help readers quickly understand the main points of a single story or catch up on multiple stories on a broader topic,” and that editors review the result before publication.
Journalists at several McClatchy newspapers said they were alarmed by the lack of clear answers regarding the use of the tool as well as the use of their names on the AI-generated versions. They said their union contracts also required the company to provide advance notice before introducing major technological changes.
Journalists from different newspapers have informed management of their strike in separate letters several times in recent weeks. Newsrooms involved include The Sacramento Bee, The Miami Herald, The Modesto Bee, The Bradenton Herald, The Tacoma News Tribune, The Bellingham Herald, The Olympian, Tri-City Herald and The Idaho Statesman.
More than 65 union employees at the Miami Herald and Bradenton Herald said in a letter to management Thursday that their contracts prohibit the company from using their bylines without the journalists’ consent. They said McClatchy had not been transparent about its use of generative AI with its journalists or with its readers.
“Filling our newspapers and websites with AI-generated content harms the relationships journalists build in our communities for truly sustainable newsrooms,” they wrote.
In a letter sent to editorial leaders by members of the Sacramento Bee News Guild on March 27, journalists noted that while the Content Scaling Agent was intended to increase the number of articles published, no increase in the number of editors was planned.
“When AI asks journalists to edit summaries, we are asked to take time for serious journalism,” the letter said.
The Washington State News Guild, which represents employees at newspapers including The Olympian and The Tacoma News Tribune, told management last Friday that the Content Scaling Agent amounted to an “ethics violation.”
“Despite executives’ claims that ‘CSA’ will save us and that subscribers will continue to pay for a product riddled with AI-generated repetition, we see this as nothing more than a race to the bottom,” the letter said.
