As AI reshapes newsrooms, leading media outlets are charting different paths for its use

The Guardian’s 2024 sale of The Observer sparked a strike, which in turn led to a dispute over the use of AI in the newsroom. Photo (cc) 2012 by Bryantbob.

By Erik P. Bucy and Milad Jalalian Ebrahimi

A labor dispute erupted at The Guardian’s London headquarters in December 2024, with nearly 500 journalists going on strike to protest the proposed sale of the Guardian-owned Observer.

With the newsroom hobbled, the British publication’s management allegedly deployed generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and Claude to suggest headlines and write descriptions of photos for people using screen readers. The National Union of Journalists cried foul, calling this move a clear attempt to undermine collective bargaining.

As media and communication scholars, we saw the outrage over management’s alleged use of AI during the strike — the details of which the outlet’s management has disputed — as more than routine wrangling over adherence to labor law. The incident showed how AI is becoming integrated into daily news work through translation, interview transcription, research, writing and audience analytics. At the same time, the incorporation of AI in newsrooms has raised new worries about accuracy and bias.

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Two cheers for the Mass. Senate, whose proposed shield law would formalize the status quo

The Massachusetts Statehouse
The Massachusetts Statehouse. Photo (cc) 2024 by Dan Kennedy.

The Massachusetts Senate has passed a shield law that would give journalists some protection from having to identify their confidential sources, reports Matt Stout (sub. req.) in The Boston Globe. But it’s not clear how much the measure would actually accomplish.

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The shield legislation, in the form of an amendment filed by Sen. Rebecca Rausch, a Needham Democrat, would have to pass the House and be signed by Gov. Maura Healey before it becomes law.

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Former New Hampshire newspaper publisher Jay Lucas pleads guilty to securities fraud

Civil War memorial and City Hall in Claremont, N.H. Photo (cc) 2019 by Djmaschek.

The strange saga of erstwhile newspaper publisher Jay Lucas has come to an end. The owner of the now-defunct Eagle Times of Claremont, New Hampshire, who is also a former Republican gubernatorial candidate, pleaded guilty to securities fraud last Friday in New York, according to Todd Bookman of New Hampshire Public Radio.

Lucas, 71, could be sentenced to as much as 65 years in prison and $5 million in fines. “I knew at the time it was wrong and a huge mistake and a crime,” Lucas told the judge, according to Bookman. “I deeply regret my conduct and I’m sorry for what I have done.”

Lucas purchased the Eagle Times in 2022. As Damien Fisher wrote for inDepthNH, Lucas said he would “would focus on positive, uplifting stories.” Fisher added:

Lucas didn’t mention that he bought the paper with other people’s money, as alleged. Instead, he presented it as part of his Sunshine Initiative, a vaguely defined venture to revitalize the local area through happiness.

Lucas allegedly took millions from people to be invested in startup health and wellness companies. But the investment money he took instead went to pay alimony, rent, fund his purchase of the Eagle Times, and hire political consultants.

Lucas shut down the Eagle Times in 2025 after failing to make payroll. The Granite Eagle, a digital publication that Lucas helped found, continued to publish without his involvement, but it doesn’t appear to have covered local news and has not posted any new content since last December.

The Eagle, later the Eagle Times, had been a star-crossed publication for many years. It was purchased in 1946 by John McLane Clark, a former editorial writer for The Washington Post who’d lost out in a bid to buy the Union and the Leader in Manchester; instead, those papers fell into the hands of the notorious right-wing hate-monger and pedophile William Loeb.

Clark died in 1950, drowning while canoeing in Sugar River, according to Steve Taylor of The Valley News in nearby Lebanon, New Hampshire. The Eagle Times closed in 2009, but was revived at some point by an out-of-state chain.

Earlier coverage:

Bari Weiss strikes again, hiring the incredibly boring Ross Douthat as a ‘60 Minutes’ correspondent

Ross Douthat. Photo via The New York Times YouTube channel.

I had to laugh when I read New York Times opinion editor Kathleen Kingsbury’s praise for columnist Ross Douthat, who’s leaving the Times to take a job at “60 Minutes”:

Katie Kingsbury, the opinion editor at The Times, said in a memo to her staff that Mr. Douthat made the case for “a religiously serious, intellectually restless conservatism.”

“He was right about things early, wrong about things honestly and never, not once, boring,” she added.

Douthat is incredibly boring, and I find it hard to imagine that Kingsbury disagrees. I also doubt she’ll have much trouble finding a more engaging conservative to replace Douthat if that’s what she wants to do. She might consider Kevin Williamson of The Dispatch, who, like Douthat, is a conservative Catholic, and whose recent takedown (sub. req.) of JD Vance’s book “Communion” is both hilarious and devastating.

As for Douthat, I thought perhaps CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss and “60 Minutes” executive producer Nick Bilton were planning to use him as a commentator. Nope. He’ll be a full-fledged correspondent, despite having no television experience and, as far as I know, no reporting background.

A contrite Platner strategist makes an important point about politics and the decline of local news

James Stewart in the 1939 movie “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.”

Now he tells us. In a recent podcast with Ezra Klein of The New York Times, former Graham Platner political strategist Morris Katz admits the obvious: that it shouldn’t have taken a credible accusation of rape to force Platner out of the race. Katz says:

In hindsight, knowing what we know now, the Reddit posts alone probably should have been enough — or should have been enough. The tattoo should have been enough. The initial New York Times story on troubling behavior should have been enough.

That being said, it appears that Maine Democrats have settled on a strong alternative in Troy Jackson, who is leading the Republican incumbent, Susan Collins, in some polls. (By the way: Another former Platner consultant, Daniel Moraff, also faces accusations of sexual assault, reports progressive independent journalist Marisa Kabas. What a train wreck.)

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How Bill Siroty, who died Sunday at 75, helped usher in the age of political blogging

Bill Siroty was an early supporter of Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential campaign. Photo (cc) 2003 by Elvert Barnes.

Bill Siroty, a New Hampshire political activist who died Sunday at 75, was one of the original political bloggers. I profiled him for The Boston Phoenix in November 2003 to find out how he’d turned his daily newsletter, New Hampshire News Links, into an influential outlet for political news ahead of that state’s presidential primary.

Paging through this 22-year-old story is like reliving the early days of the internet. There’s Chuck Todd, then with “Hotline,” now the retired moderator of NBC’s “Meet the Press.” There’s James Pindell, then with PoliticsNH.com, now with The Boston Globe. There’s Deborah “Arnie” Arnesen, still a force on New Hampshire talk radio. And there’s Josh Marshall, still blogging at his Talking Points Memo site. This was all before social media, which has distorted politics — and the media — beyond recognition.

My condolences to Bill’s friends and family, including his husband, Bill Stelling.

An unlikely bigfoot

Meet Dr. Bill Siroty: Physician, Dean supporter, and New Hampshire’s indispensable media activist

The Boston Phoenix | Nov. 7, 2003

NASHUA, N.H. — The doctor sitting across the table from me in the Southern New Hampshire Medical Center cafeteria, sipping iced coffee late on a Friday morning, would not be on anyone’s list of media stars in this state’s first-in-the-nation presidential primary.

William Siroty, a mild-mannered 52-year-old allergist and internist, doesn’t write about politics, analyze poll numbers, or blurt out pithy sound bites on TV talk shows. He speaks so softly that I have to ask him to repeat himself whenever a can goes clunk! in the soda machine behind me.

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Three for Friday: Trump and the Times, Mass. public records and journalism cuts at UMass Dartmouth

1905 photo via Wikimedia Commons.

I’m heading out for a family wedding in a little while, but the media news keeps coming. Here are three stories you should be aware of.

📰 Trump backs down. “The federal government says it will drop its subpoenas compelling New York Times reporters to testify about anonymous sources in a case that involved President Donald Trump’s claims about a Qatari-gifted Air Force One jet” (CNN). My earlier coverage.

📰 Mass. Senate to boost public records. “Top Senate Democrats signaled Thursday they will seek a vote next week on legislation that would, like a bill passed last month in the House, subject both the governor’s office and the Legislature to some kind of public records framework, taking aim at the same topic already targeted by a question on the November ballot” (CommonWealth Beacon).

📰 Journalism cuts at UMass Dartmouth. “Student journalists at UMass Dartmouth are speaking out about what they say may be unfair treatment, or even retribution, after the university’s only journalism professor was let go — two months after a university dean wrote that the professor’s contract extension was already ‘approved’” (New Bedford Light).

Editorials aren’t the only way for local news outlets to engage with their communities

Outside the Seattle Daily Star, c. 1900. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

Ken Paulson, the former editor-in-chief of USA Today, has written a lament for the decline of newspaper editorials. Now the director of the Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University, Paulson argues in The Conversation that editorials are a key part of civic engagement. He bolsters his case by quoting the renowned Kansas publisher William Allen White:

The editorial is the soul of the newspaper. Maybe the heart and the soul. And on a good newspaper that knows and understands and loves its hometown, or its home country, the editorial is the heart of the town, or nation as well.

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But though Paulson correctly identifies the rise of corporate newspaper ownership as a key factor in the decline of editorials, he misses something less malign and equally important: the rise of nonprofit local news organizations. Under the law, nonprofits can’t endorse political candidates or take positions on ballot questions lest they lose their tax exemption. Although they are free to editorialize on other topics, in practice, the vast majority of nonprofits have eschewed editorials altogether.

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On the new ‘Beat the Press,’ we take on Trump’s subpoenas of New York Times journalists

Click here or on image to watch on Contrarian Boston.

On the latest edition of “Beat the Press with Emily Rooney,” we take a look at the Trump regime’s decision to subpoena New York Times journalists in an attempt to find out who told the paper about security problems on the new Air Force One, a corrupt gift from the Qatari government.

As we note, the Constitution does not protect journalists from having to identify their confidential sources if they are ordered to do so by a court. But the White House is running roughshod over long-established standards regarding how such demands ought to be handled.

We also examine how news organizations decided whether or not to carry Trump’s lie-infested speech about election security, and his threat to challenge the broadcast licenses of outlets that took a pass; and how the World Cup turned out to be a huge success in Greater Boston despite predictions by many in the media that we were headed for a disastrous confluence of chaos and gridlock. Plus, our panel’s Rants & Raves.

Emily is in the moderator’s seat, joined by our host, Scott Van Voorhis of Contrarian Boston; Lylah Alphonse of The Boston Globe, and me. Our producer extraordinaire is Tonia Magras of Hull Bay Productions.

Talking about local news with ‘The Codcast,’ CommonWealth Beacon’s video podcast

I had an opportunity to take part recently in “The Codcast,” a video podcast that’s part of CommonWealth Beacon. The other panelists were Sophie Culpepper, who covers local news for Nieman Lab, and Javier Marin, executive chairman of El Planeta, Boston’s Spanish-language newspaper. Moderating was CommonWealth’s editor, Laura Colarusso.

We had a good conversation that covered some important topics including trust, business models and the possibility of government assistance to local news outlets. At a time when nonprofit news seems to be where the growth is, Marin made some cogent points about why we need a vibrant for-profit news sector as well.

You can watch the video version on YouTube or download the audio wherever you get your podcasts.