Artificial intelligence will save local news

Or not. Regardless, some news organizations are trying, including the once-venerable Philadelphia Inquirer:

The Philadelphia Inquirer hadn’t written much about suburbs like Lower Merion, Pa., and Cherry Hill, N.J. for years. Now it is revisiting those communities—with an assist from AI.

Last year, the Inquirer launched newsletters in four locations, amassing more than 50,000 free subscriptions.

Reporters are using artificial-intelligence tools to scan community meetings for topics that may prompt news, such as a zoning issue related to an ICE detention facility and a proposal for a new data center. The effort is partly funded by a partnership between OpenAI and Microsoft and the nonprofit Lenfest Institute, which owns the Inquirer.

Matt Boggie, chief technology and product officer at the Inquirer, sees AI as an opportunity for growth after years of shrinking the paper’s footprint.

“If we go into these areas and can give context people appreciate, they’re more likely to become paying subscribers to the paper,” he said, adding that the newsletters are “a massive subscription driver” so far. The paper now has plans for eight more AI-assisted newsletters overseen by two new staffers.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer is trying too, while facing the inevitable backlash that AI-generated writing is a bargain with the devil.

Cleveland Plain Dealer Editor Chris Quinn has written more than a dozen columns in the past year about how his newsroom is experimenting with AI tools, including having a human “rewrite specialist” use AI to turn reporters’ notes into article drafts. He dismisses complaints that AI-drafted stories may not be written very elegantly.

“We publish news, not poetry. Who died? What restaurant closed? What was the Browns score?” Quinn wrote in one recent piece. “The quicker we get to the point, the happier our busy readers are.”