How AI-generated local news coverage undermines those who are trying to do it the right way

I’m sorry, but this is just appalling. South Shore News, which uses AI to generate lifelike stories about local government meetings in 19 communities south of Boston, is rolling out subscription fees — and some people are actually paying.

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Aidan Ryan reports (sub. req.) in The Boston Globe that Justin Evans, the founder and and editor as well as a Whitman selectboard member, has signed up 350 paid subscribers, “many of whom are deeply invested in town politics and want to learn more about how neighboring towns from Weymouth down to Plymouth are tackling common issues.”

Plymouth, eh? They could check out the Plymouth Independent, a well-regarded nonprofit news outlet that doesn’t charge for its coverage. On the other hand, I’m not aware of an independent news source that covers Weymouth (Gannett’s Patriot Ledger provides some), which points to the problem from which Evans is trying to profit. As I told Ryan:

One of the dangers that we see in the local news crisis is that you can have ventures like the South Shore News spring up based on AI and providing something that leads people to say that it’s better than nothing. But at the same time, they could block the rise of human news outlets or harm the ones that are already there.

Among those that the News could harm is a direct competitor called the South Shore Times, which touts itself as “a locally owned, nonpartisan digital news organization” that uses actual reporters. The Times is in just eight communities, but those towns overlap with the News’ coverage area.

The Times seems lively and innovative, inviting readers to submit stories through a “Community Publishers” program and assigning reporters to cover local government, schools, the business community and police. Its About page says:

We are a community platform as much as a news organization. We welcome story submissions, letters to the editor, and opinion pieces from South Shore residents. We provide space for community voices and encourage civic dialogue that is open, constructive, and grounded in shared facts.

Times publisher Nick Puleo, who launched his site 18 months ago, told me by email after this item was first posted that the Times is attracting 156,000 monthly views, with 38,000 uniques per month. He’s also signed up around 2,000 email newsletter subscribers. So clearly someone likes human-generated local news.

Meanwhile, here’s what the News has to say about its approach:

SSN uses AI tools to transcribe and draft coverage from public meetings, which is then reviewed and edited for accuracy. This approach lets us cover more towns and more meetings than any traditional newsroom our size could. It’s not perfect, and we’re transparent about that — if you ever spot an error, please reach out and we’ll correct it.

Great. Publish first, correct later. I mean, I do that too, but not on purpose.

According to Ryan’s Globe story, Evans uses a variety of tools, including YouTube, Google Gemini, ChatGPT and Claude, to transform videos of government meetings into publishable stories. He charges $8 a month or $80 a year; his 3,000 or so free readers get a preview.

Evans is also considering a print edition so that the News will be eligible for public notices, also known as legal ads, which government agencies and private entities are required to purchase in order to inform the public about hearings, estate auctions, bids and the like. Under Massachusetts law, public notices must be run in print newspapers.

But as I wrote last week for CommonWealth Beacon, two bills before the Legislature would get rid of that requirement, allowing municipalities simply to post such notices on their own website at no cost — a measure that would undermine government transparency and deprive struggling news organizations of a vital source of revenue.

A third bill that I’ve consulted on would allow public notices to run in digital-only news outlets, as is already the case in a few communities that received legislative approval through home-rule petitions. But the language is still being worked out, and — at a minimum — news organizations that seek to be eligible for public notices should have locally based journalists. That should apply to print outlets as well, including whatever print edition of South Shore News that Evans has in mind.

Using AI to scrape videos of government meetings is not in itself an outrage. A frequently cited example is the Midcoast Villager in Camden, Maine, which uses AI to keep track of meetings in some 40 communities. The difference is that the summaries are given to reporters to decide whether any follow-up is needed. The summaries themselves are not published.

Finally, as I told Ryan, coverage is only half of what a good local news organization provides. The other half is to act as a spark for civic engagement. Reporters need to be out in the community. The news outlet itself needs to be involved in events, even organizing a few of its own.

I’m not going to say that Evans’ South Shore News isn’t providing a service. He’s transparent about what he’s doing, and clearly there are those who find it useful. But it falls far short of what we really need. It would be a shame if his efforts end up hurting those who are trying to do journalism the right way.