Media Nation

How local news outlets are covering the antisemitic terror attack in Colorado

The Pearl Street Mall in Boulder, Colo. Photo (cc) 2009 by Lee Coursey.

The FBI got ahead of the story on Sunday, claiming that an outburst of antisemitic violence in Boulder, Colorado, was a “targeted terror attack,” even as local police were saying it was too soon to tell.

As it turned out, the suspect, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, really did appear to be motivated by his hatred of Jews. But it wasn’t a good sign that Trump’s shoot-from-the-hip FBI was claiming to know what was behind the attack even as Boulder Police Chief Stephen Redfearn was holding a news conference in which he said it was too soon to ascribe any motives.

Boulder Police: “we are not calling it a terror attack yet.” They say they are still identifying motive and would be irresponsible to say motive at this point FBI already claimed it’s a “targeted terror attack.”

— News Breaking LIVE (@newsbreakinglive.bsky.social) 2025-06-01T22:09:30.046Z

Soliman is accused of using what Chief Redfearn called “a makeshift flamethrower” to burn people who were walking in support of the Israeli hostages still being held by the terrorist group Hamas. The walks, a regular event in Boulder, are sponsored by an organization called Run for Their Lives.

Soliman reportedly yelled “Free Palestine!” as he carried out his assault at the Pearl Street Mall. Eight people were injured, ranging in age from 52 to 88. I haven’t seen much in the way of details yet, but The Colorado Sun reports that one of those injured is in critical condition.

When local news goes national, it’s always worthwhile to check in on what is being reported on the ground by journalists who really know the area. Here’s a quick roundup, starting with two news outlets in the city of 106,000 as well as a few statewide media organizations.

• The Daily Camera of Boulder is the city’s paper of record. It is also owned by Alden Global Capital, a cost-slashing hedge fund that has consolidated much of its operations at The Denver Post, the state’s major metro; Denver and Boulder are separated by about 30 miles. The Camera and the Post covered the story with a team of four reporters, three from the Post and one from the Camera. Their story was updated at 6:52 a.m. Colorado time. Notable:

Videos showed people rushing to pour water on one victim while others lay collapsed nearby.

“It’s almost like it was a gun of fire,” said Lynn Segal, who witnessed the attack. “It’s like a line of fire.”

• The Boulder Reporting Lab, a nonprofit newsroom, also reported on the attack. The story says it was updated today, but there is no time stamp on it. Notable:

Henry Bonn-Elchoness, 18, was inside Into the Wind, a toy store at 14th and Pearl, when the attack occurred.

“We walked by the crime scene right when it happened,” he said. “We saw smoke…. I didn’t see any fire, but I know that there was fire. They were clearing out people really fast and no one knew what happened for a while.”

He and his friends left and returned about 30 minutes later.

“We saw three older women being put in ambulances,” Bonn-Elchoness said. “It looked pretty bad. They were all awake and coherent, but it seemed worrisome. It was very scary. It was a shock.”

• The Colorado Sun, a large statewide nonprofit based in Denver, posted an updated story today at 6:47 a.m. local time. Notable:

Aaron Brooks, a Jewish Boulder resident, arrived at the Run for their Lives demonstration late Sunday — just moments after the attack. He found a grisly scene.

“I saw smoke on the ground. I saw blood on the ground. I saw smoke coming from a person — literally a human being burning,” he said.

• Colorado Public Radio, a network of stations that reaches about 80% of the state, posted the most recent version of its coverage at 11:06 p.m. Notable:

Boulder City Councilwoman Tara Winer has participated in past Run For Their Lives events and said several of the victims were friends of hers.

“The Boulder Jewish community is close,” she said Sunday. “We’re not monolithic, but we support each other and we’re close.”

Winer said she’s been cursed at and called a ‘Jewish supremacist’ during city council public comment sessions and that the level of vitriol has increased over the past six months.

On Sunday she planned to go ahead with a preplanned event that night marking the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, on the topic of “How our lives have changed since Oct. 7.”

• Axios started a Boulder newsletter late last year, and its story has a good roundup of what people are saying on social media — including a claim by President Trump’s deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, that Soliman had “illegally overstayed” a tourist visa.

We are in the midst of a frightening outburst of high-profile terrorist attacks in the U.S. As The New York Times notes, the Colorado incident follows arson on the residence of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and the murder of two Israeli embassy aides in Washington.

Regardless of your position on the war between Israel and Hamas, it is textbook antisemitism to use it as a pretext to assault people who are Jewish. We will see whether FBI Director Kash Patel has any intention of fighting this wave effectively — or if he is content to preen about it on social media.

More: This post has been updated to add Axios Boulder.

Feds indict alleged ringleader in NHPR harassment case; plus, public media lawsuits, and trouble for Musk

Photo from the Middlesex County district attorney’s office via NHPR

It’s been a major loose end in a frightening story about harassment and threats directed at journalists.

Four men have been sentenced to federal prison for carrying out a campaign of terror against New Hampshire Public Radio journalist Lauren Chooljian, her parents and her editor, Dan Barrick. All four appeared to be motivated by Chooljian’s reporting on Eric Spofford, the founder of several addiction treatment centers, who, according to Chooljian’s reporting, had engaged in sexual abuse and harassment.

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Yet Spofford denied any involvment and was not charged. He even turned around and sued Chooljian and NHPR for libel, a suit that was dismissed by a New Hampshire state judge.

Now, according to a story by WBUR and posted at NHPR, federal authorities are charging Spofford with orchestrating a conspiracy to vandalize the homes of Chooljian, her parents and Barrick — vandalism that included threatening and offensive graffiti. The story says in part:

Prosecutors say Spofford paid his close friend, Eric Labarge, $20,000 in two installments to vandalize the homes in 2022. Spofford allegedly provided the addresses and specific instructions on what to do. Labarge then found three others to carry out the attacks.

Spofford reportedly lives in Salem, New Hampshire, and in Miami. He was arrested Friday and will be arraigned in U.S. District Court in Boston on Monday. According to a press release from the U.S. attorney’s office, Spofford, 40, was indicted by a grand jury on four counts of conspiracy and stalking. If he’s found guilty, he could face a prison sentence of up to five years and a fine of up to $250,000 on each of the four counts.

Continue reading “Feds indict alleged ringleader in NHPR harassment case; plus, public media lawsuits, and trouble for Musk”

Trump’s cuts force the elimination of Mass. library access to academic databases and The Boston Globe

The Trump administration’s war on access to knowledge will result in the end of public library access in Massachusetts to a number of academic databases and The Boston Globe. The cuts take effect on July 1.

The dispiriting news is reported in a memo issued May 20 by the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners that is weirdly titled “MBLC Maintains some Databases, Support for eBooks, and ComCat.” I don’t mean to be critical of the commissioners, since Trump’s perversity is not their fault. But the news here is what’s being cut, not what’s being saved.

The cuts are the result of an executive order issued by Trump on March 14 titled “Continuing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy.” The order eliminates a number of agencies and programs, including the Institute of Museum and Library Services, which in the current fiscal year provided $3.6 million for library services in Massachusetts as well as grants to local libraries. The MBLC spent about $2.2 million of its federal allocation on access to various online databases. MBLC director Maureen Amyot said in a statement:

The federal impact cannot be overstated. In Massachusetts, over 1,600 school, public, academic and special libraries from across the state benefit from federal IMLS funding. Millions of people rely on federally funded library services. Developing a plan for services in an environment of almost daily federal change has been challenging, but our goal has remained constant: to maintain services that are integral to the functioning of our system and heavily relied on by the people of the Commonwealth.

The MBLC was able to preserve access to some databases. The decisions about what to cut and what to keep were based on usage, according to the MBLC. In addition, the statewide program that funds access to e-books and audiobooks will continue, as well the Commonwealth Catalog, or ComCat, which provides access to items that a local library may not have.

Needless to say, there is no reason for any of this. Trump inherited a strong economy that continues to perform reasonably well despite his efforts to take a wrecking ball to it. These cuts call to mind his infamous outburst in 2016: “I love the poorly educated.” It appears that he wants to keep them that way.

What’s being cut

Boston Globe Article Archive
Britannica Moderna
Gale Academic OneFile Select
Gale General OneFile
Gale Health and Wellness
Gale in Context: Biography
Gale in Context: Elementary
Gale in Context:Environmental Studies
Gale in Context: Global Issues
Gale in Context: Middle School
Gale in Context: Science
Gale in Context: US History
Gale in Context: World History
Gale Interactive: Science
GaleLegalForms
HeritageQuest Online
Peterson’s Career Prep
Peterson’s Test Prep
Science Database (ProQuest)
Transparency Language Online

What’s being saved

Britannica Escholar
Britannica Library
Britannica School
Gale Academic OneFile + OneFile Collections
Gale in Context: Opposing Viewpoints
PebbleGo

What’s the Colorado angle in the NPR lawsuit?; plus, a Muzzle for Quincy’s mayor, and an AI LOL

Kevin Dale, executive editor of Colorado Public Radio. Photo (cc) 2021 by Dan Kennedy.

I haven’t seen any explanation for why three public radio outlets in Colorado joined NPR in suing the Trump administration over its threat to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. I’m glad they did, but it seems to me that all 246 member stations ought to sign on, including GBH and WBUR in Boston.

The Colorado entities, according to Ben Markus of Colorado Public Radio, are CPR (which reaches 80% of the state through a network of transmitters and translators), Aspen Public Radio and KSUT Public Radio of Ignacio, a Native American station that serves the Southern Ute Tribe.

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When I was in Colorado several years ago to interview people for the book that Ellen Clegg and I wrote, “What Works in Community News,” CPR was perhaps the largest news organization in the state, with a staff of 65 journalists. (I say “perhaps” because executive editor Kevin Dale thought one or two television stations might be bigger.) Some cuts were made last year as business challenges hit a number of public broadcasting outlets as well as NPR itself.

The basis of the lawsuit, writes NPR media reporter David Folkenflik, is that CPB is an independent, private nonprofit that is funded by Congress. The suit claims that the president has no right to rescind any money through an executive order; only Congress can do that. Moreover, the suit contends that this is pure viewpoint discrimination, as demonstrated by Trump’s own words — that NPR and PBS, which also relies on CPB funding, present “biased and partisan news coverage.”

Continue reading “What’s the Colorado angle in the NPR lawsuit?; plus, a Muzzle for Quincy’s mayor, and an AI LOL”

Northeastern’s Rahul Bhargava talks about his innovative approach to making sense of data

Professor Rahul Bhargava’s approach to data storytelling includes forks and Brazilian drumming.

It’s an all-Northeastern podcast this week as Ellen Clegg and I talk with Rahul Bhargava, a colleague at Northeastern University. Rahul is a professor who crosses boundaries: the boundaries of storytelling and data, the boundaries of deep dives into collaborative research and interactive museum exhibits and plays.

He holds a master’s degree in media arts and science from MIT and a bachelor’s degree in electrical and computer engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. But he also minored in multimedia production. He brings the power of big data research to the masses, through newsroom workshops, interactive museum exhibits and more.

Bhargava has collaborated with groups in Brazil, in Minnesota and at the World Food Program. He helps local communities use data to understand their world, and as a tool for change. There’s more to data than just bar charts. Sometimes it involves forks! His recently published book, “Community Data: Creative Approaches to Empowering People with Information,” unlocks all sorts of secrets.

Keeping with our all-Huskies theme, Ellen and I also talk with Lisa Thalhamer, a longtime TV journalist who is now a graduate student at Northeastern. Lisa realized that like many fields, journalism suffers from a gap between academic research and its implementation in workplaces. She is finding ways to bridge that gap, and urges an Avenger’s-style team to lift up the work of a free press.

Ellen has a Quick Take on a recent visit to Santa Barbara, California, and the efforts to revive a legacy paper, the Santa Barbara News-Press.

My Quick Take is about the latest developments from the National Trust for Local News. It involves a chain of weekly papers in Colorado — their very first acquisition dating back to 2021. And it’s not good news at all for the journalists who work at those papers and the communities they serve.

You can listen to our conversation here, or you can subscribe through your favorite podcast app.

SCOTUS won’t consider a teen’s failed attempts to wear an anti-transgender T-shirt to school

Liam Morrison wearing the second of his banned T-shirts in the spring of 2023. Handout photo via Nemasket Week.

Last October, I wrote that I would be surprised if the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a middle school student’s appeal of a ruling that local officials had a right to ban him from wearing an anti-transgender T-shirt. But the way this court is heading, I have to say that maybe I am a little surprised.

The court declined to hear the case, reports Lawrence Hurley for NBC News. That should be the end of the line for Liam Morrison, who in the spring of 2023 — when he was a seventh-grader — was sent home from school by authorities in Middleborough, Massachusetts, for wearing a T-shirt that said “There Are Only Two Genders” and then again for wearing a shirt that said “There Are Only (Censored) Genders.”

Here is the post I wrote last October, when he and his high-profile supporters appealed to the court. It’s got all the background that you need. Meanwhile, let me explain how close a call this is.

About a month ago, the court ruled against an online Catholic school in Missouri that sought to become the country’s first religious charter school — that is, a public school. As Amy Howe reported for SCOTUSblog, the vote was 4-4, with Justice Amy Coney Barrett recusing herself. If Barrett had taken part and voted with the majority, the Catholic school would have won.

Likewise, Morrison’s case has been cloaked in the garb of religious freedom, and he was being represented by a Christian-right law firm. It only takes four justices to agree to hear a case, a process known as granting a writ of certiorari, or “granting cert.”

Thus all it would have taken to get Morrison’s case before the court was the support of the same four justices who ruled in favor of the Catholic school in the Missouri case. As for whether Morrison could have won, Barrett herself has some pretty strong ties to the religious right, though she’s also emerged as something of an independent thinker.

What that suggests is that Morrison’s case was exceptionally weak, and the Supreme Court has no interest in overturning precedents leaving disciplinary decisions in the hands of public school authorities.

More: I initially failed to note that Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito said they would have heard the case. Because of course they would.

Public broadcasting giant WNET doesn’t want you to see this Art Spiegelman cartoon

WNET, the New York public broadcasting giant, doesn’t want you to see this cartoon — at least not on public television.

The New York Times reports (gift link) that 90 seconds have been butchered out of a documentary about the artist Art Spiegelman that is scheduled to be shown as part of the “American Masters” series on PBS. It is, as you can see, wildly unflattering to President Trump, and it comes at a moment when Trump is trying to eliminate all funding for public media.

WNET vice president Stephen Segaller told Times reporter Marc Tracy that the 9-year-old drawing of Trump, with feces and flies on his head and a swastika superimposed over the image, was a “breach of protocol,” adding, “I don’t think we’d have made a different decision if it had been a year earlier.” Yeah, probably not. Last year at this time, Trump was leading President Joe Biden in the polls, so the incentive not to antagonize him was just as strong then as it is now.

Spiegelman was quoted as saying, “It’s tragic and appalling that PBS and WNET are willing to become collaborators with the sinister forces trying to muzzle free speech.”

But at least you can see Spiegelman’s cartoon in the Times. And here.

New Jersey and California learn that what the government giveth, the government can taketh away

There are two problems with direct government funding of journalism. The first is that it opens the door to government interference. The second is that, even if safeguards are built in to protect independence, the money can be reduced or cut off in the event of a crisis.

That is exactly what is happening in New Jersey and California. In the former, that state’s Civic Information Consortium, a pioneering effort to distribute taxpayer funds for journalism and other types of storytelling, is in danger of being zeroed out after receiving $3 million this past year. In the latter, a deal that California officials had reached with Google to pay for news is starting to come apart.

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New Jersey’s Democratic governor, Phil Murphy, has proposed getting rid of the funding in his budget for fiscal year 2026. The consortium calls it “a potentially devastating blow to local media and civic information access across the state. Without this funding, NJCIC’s critical work could cease.”

Since it was launched in 2021, the consortium has granted some $9 million to 56 organizations. It’s administered by an independent board appointed by the governor and run out of Montclair State University. Ellen Clegg and I wrote about it in our book, “What Works in Community News.”

Murphy declined to comment on the cut when contacted by Terrence T. McDonald of the New Jersey Monitor, but McDonald noted that the governor’s office had said earlier this year that his budget proposal would include “some belt-tightening.” Even so, McDonald observed that next year’s budget was on track to be larger than the current year’s.

The California situation stems from a much-criticized deal that the state cut with Google last year. According to Jeanne Kuang of CalMatters, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has reduced a $30 million allocation to help pay for local news to just $10 million for the coming year as he wrestles with a $12 billion deficit.

That, in turn, trigged a cut by Google from $15 million to $10 million. The money — now just $20 million instead of $45 million — will be administered by a newly formed California Civic Media Fund, which Kuang writes will comprise “a board of publisher representatives to determine how to distribute it.”

California’s five-year deal with Google was reached after the state abandoned efforts to pass legislation that would have taxed Google for the news that it repurposes. One version of the tax would have brought in $500 million a year.

There are all kinds of problems with what essentially amounts to a link tax, started with the reality that news publishers benefit when Google links to their content. Users who click through encounter those publishers’ advertising, or may even be induced to subscribe if they have a paywall.

Now publishers are facing a much deeper threat from Google, as the search giant is going all-in on artificial intelligence, thus eliminating the need to click through.

“Links were the last redeeming quality of search that gave publishers traffic and revenue,” Danielle Coffey, the CEO and president of News/Media Alliance, said in a statement reported by The Verge. “Now Google just takes content by force and uses it with no return, the definition of theft. The DOJ remedies must address this to prevent continued domination of the internet by one company.”

“DOJ remedies” is a reference to recommendations by the Department of Justice after Google recently lost two separate antitrust cases.

CJR was said to be working on a story about Wesley Lowery. It finally drops — and it is horrifying.

Wesley Lowery, left, speaking at a panel discussion. Photo (cc) 2016 by New America.

When Sewell Chan was fired by the Columbia Journalism Review last month for reasons that have not been adequately explained, he wrote on social media about a sensitive story that was in the works. He said he had what he described as “pointed conversations” with three staff members. Here’s how he described one of those conversations:

[It] was with an editor who has been working for weeks on a sensitive MeToo investigation I launched about sexual harassment by a prominent investigative reporter. Following a legal review of that story, I urged her to share her draft to the dean so that we could move expeditiously toward publication. She asked for more time, to which I reluctantly acceded. The story remains unpublished.

Those of us who are media obsessives assumed he was referring to former Washington Post reporter Wesley Lowery, a Pulitzer Prize winner. In March, Lowery was the subject of a tough article in his former paper (gift link), written by Will Sommer, alleging that he had left his job at American University over allegations that he’d made “inappropriate sexual comments in private meetings with students and unwanted sexual advances and actions toward journalists.”

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On Wednesday, the story that Chan had alluded to finally dropped. And it is truly the stuff that nightmares are made of. Betsy Morais, named interim editor of the Columbia Journalism Review after Chan’s firing, reports that Lowery engaged in a pattern of serious sexual misconduct while he was at American University, with several women saying that Lowery had pressured them into sex or sexually assaulted them after he plied them with alcohol. It is a deeply disturbing story. Lowery would not speak with CJR, but he did give Morais a statement that I can only describe as unparseable. It says in part:

CJR’s portrayal of these periods in my personal life is incomplete and includes false insinuations about complicated dynamics. Still, I respect the women who have shared their experiences and take their perspectives seriously. As a young professional, I did not always recognize the power imbalances that surfaced as personal relationships evolved into professional ones, and vice versa.

He adds that he has since “committed to sobriety.”

This would be a tragedy in any case, especially for the women he allegedly victimized. But it’s also a tragedy because of what Lowery represents. He is a prominent Black journalist who has been outspoken about the ways that traditional notions of objectivity have served to reinforce the status quo with regard to race and gender — both within media organizations and in how the news is covered.

I know Lowery slightly and, until recently, counted myself among his admirers. I interviewed him briefly for my 2018 book “The Return of the Moguls.” I’ve emailed back and forth with him about which of his books I should assign my ethics students. I’ve assigned his essays on objectivity as well as the video of a panel discussion he took part in on that topic hosted by the Columbia Journalism School, which is the home of CJR.

It is a real loss that his voice will no longer be heard. And no, I won’t be assigning his work anymore. There are times when it’s just too difficult to separate the writer from what they have written.

Lowery worked for The Boston Globe about a dozen years ago, and when editor Marty Baron left to become executive editor of The Washington Post, Lowery followed not long after. He wrote an important book about the first wave of Black Lives Matter demonstrations, “They Can’t Kill Us All,” and he helped the Post build a widely praised database of people who had been killed by police officers.

But it is Lowery’s critique of objectivity that was uniquely valuable. I don’t agree with him entirely — as Walter Lippmann originally conceived of objectivity, it is the fair-minded, evidence-based pursuit of the truth, not mindless balance, which is the way it is often caricatured. And I don’t really think Lowery disagrees with Lippmann.

At the beginning of each semester, I’ve asked my ethics students to read an op-ed piece (gift link) that Lowery wrote for The New York Times in 2020 headlined “A Reckoning Over Objectivity, Led by Black Journalists,” and to watch an address that Baron delivered at Brandeis in 2023 called “In Defense of Objectivity.”

What’s striking is that Lowery’s and Baron’s views aren’t really that far apart, even though their clashes over Lowery’s outspokenness on social media led to Lowery’s departure from the Post.

Now Lowery has been silenced — has silenced himself. The debate over journalistic ethics, objectivity and race will be poorer without his contributions. I am not saying he deserves any special treatment for the terrible behavior of which he’s been accused. I am saying that his critique of how journalists do their work will be missed.

I realize that, in lamenting the loss of Lowery’s voice, I haven’t given voice to any of the women quoted in the CJR story. So I’m going to close with a thread on Bluesky written by Olivia Messer, the editor-in-chief of Barbed Wire, who told CJR a harrowing tale of being sexually assaulted by Lowery.

Messer also says that she was interviewed, on the record, for the article that Sommer wrote for The Washington Post and that her comments did not make it into print. Sommer has since left the Post for The Bulwark. So it sounds like there are still some loose ends to be tied up.

Here is what she posted last night:

Some of y’all noticed I’ve been uncharacteristically offline. This is why, and I remain on leave for a few weeks to handle a PTSD relapse. CJR was dogged in its pursuit of my story. Because of what I do and who I am, I felt that I had to answer their questions honestly.www.cjr.org/feature-2/we…

— Olivia Messer (@oliviamesser.bsky.social) 2025-05-21T17:17:28.955Z

I wouldn’t wish this on anyone, but I also believe it was a chance to prove that I mean what I say to the women who have trusted me with theirs. I have to believe that there’s power in telling the truth — and in journalism.

— Olivia Messer (@oliviamesser.bsky.social) 2025-05-21T17:17:53.850Z

I’m really really overwhelmed by the messages of support — and the multiple journalists who’ve DMed me about their similar experiences with him. It’s going to take time to get back to everyone, but I deeply appreciate it and am filled with just immense gratitude and relief.

— Olivia Messer (@oliviamesser.bsky.social) 2025-05-21T19:43:02.150Z

That AI-generated list of fake books was published by a Hearst subsidiary, 404 Media reports

We now know more about the AI-generated slop that was published in the Chicago Sun-Times and The Philadelphia Inquirer.

According to Jason Koebler of 404 Media, the 64-page summer guide called “Heat Index” was produced by King Features, part of the Hearst chain. As Koebler reported earlier, a freelancer named Marco Buscaglia used AI to write a guide to summer books. He admitted that he did not check his work, and it turned out that most of the books don’t exist.

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Marina Dunbar reports in The Guardian that other articles in “Heat Index” may also contain AI hallucinations, including one on food and another on gardening. The Sun-Times addressed the fiasco on Tuesday but put its statement behind the paper’s paywall. That’s unacceptable, so here’s a link where you can find it. The paper says in part:

Our partner confirmed that a freelancer used an AI agent to write the article. This should be a learning moment for all of journalism that our work is valued because of the relationship our very real, human reporters and editors have with our audiences.

The Sun-Times statement also says that subscribers won’t be charged, that “Heat Index” is being removed from its e-paper version, and that various steps are being taken to improve transparency.

The Chicago Sun-Times News Guild issued a statement as well:

The Sun-Times Guild is aware of the third-party “summer guide” content in the Sunday, May 18 edition of the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper. This was a syndicated section produced externally without the knowledge of the members of our newsroom.

We take great pride in the union-produced journalism that goes into the respected pages of our newspaper and on our website. We’re deeply disturbed that AI-generated content was printed alongside our work. The fact that it was sixty-plus pages of this “content” is very concerning — primarily for our relationship with our audience but also for our union’s jurisdiction.

Our members go to great lengths to build trust with our sources and communities and are horrified by this slop syndication. Our readers signed up for work that has been vigorously reported and fact-checked, and we hate the idea that our own paper could spread computer- or third-party-generated misinformation. We call on Chicago Public Media management to do everything it can to prevent repeating this disaster in the future.

It’s interesting that most of the focus has been on the Sun-Times rather than the Inquirer, even though “Heat Index” appeared in the Inquirer last Thursday, three days before the Sun-Times, according to Herb Scribner of The Washington Post (gift link). Axios reported that the Inquirer’s publisher and CEO, Lisa Hughes, called the screw-up “a violation of our own internal policies and a serious breach.” Mostly, though, the focus has been on Chicago, where the mistake was first caught.

It’s worth noting, too, that the Sun-Times and the Inquirer are both owned by mission-oriented nonprofits — the Sun-Times by Chicago Public Media and the Inquirer by the Lenfest Institute. It shows that anyone can get caught up in this. And I don’t really blame editors at either paper for not checking, since “Heat Index” is outside content produced by a respected media organization.

Speaking of Hearst, we have not yet heard from them as to how this was allowed to happen. Because even if it was acceptable for the Sun-Times and the Inquirer not to edit the supplement, it certainly should have been thoroughly edited by King Features before it was sent out to client newspapers.

This is a story about the hazards of AI, but, even more, it’s a story about human failure.