"At the 184-year-old Cleveland Plain Dealer, a top editor’s push to let AI draft news articles is boosting traffic — and spooking staffers."
"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.
“This article was produced with assistance from AI tools and reviewed by Cleveland.com staff,” reads a note at the bottom of each robot-penned piece, differentiating it from those still written primarily by journalists. The disclosure has done little to stem the backlash that caromed across the news industry 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 found out the position included no writing — just filing notes to an AI writing tool.
“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.”
On social media, industry veterans recoiled at the sentiment. Former Financial Times editor Lionel Barber called it “beyond dumb.” Axios reporter Sam Allard defended the applicant for “wanting to be a journalist instead of an AI content farmer.” HuffPost editor Philip Lewis wrote, “An editor for a newspaper encouraging ‘removing writing from reporters’ workloads’ should just resign.”"
Will Oremus and Scott Nover report for the Washington Post March 1, 2026.
