This is not a defense of using AI to write. Rather, it’s a critique of the slipshod standards that have long pervaded the op-ed pages of our major newspapers. As University of Maine media historian Michael Socolow has written, the op-ed page, unveiled by The New York Times more than half a century ago, was originally conceived as a way of giving a voice to various members of the community.
That function survives, but the voice, in all too many cases, belongs not to the ostensible author — in many cases an elected official, a business executive or a nonprofit leader — but, rather, to a ghostwriter who’s either a staff member or an outside consultant. Yes, the actual writer talks with the person whose byline will deceptively grace the piece, and yes, that person will also have final approval. But many op-eds are no more the work of the bylined “author” than a major political speech is the original rhetoric of the person delivering it.