Less than a week after newspaper giant McClatchy Media laid off journalists at publications nationwide, executives sent staff an emoji-laced email announcing “fresh talent.”
“Hi all, 👋,” company leadership wrote in the email with the subject line “Celebrating Our Team.”
“We want to take time to recognize our new hires at McClatchy,” the email said, “who officially started their journeys with us in August.” They included several executives, two reporters — and three editors for the company’s new artificial intelligence-powered “Content Innovation Lab.”
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Just last week, dozens of reporters with at least 17 McClatchy newspapers from coast to coast — including the Miami Herald, The Kansas City Star and the Sacramento Bee — were laid off as the company pivots toward lifestyle content written by artificial intelligence chatbots.
At the Herald, which has won 24 Pulitzer Prizes, including one this year for reporting that led to sex-trafficking charges against Jeffrey Epstein, more than one-third of the editorial staff was let go as the struggling newspaper chain deals with a dwindling readership and a 41% decline in consumer revenue.
The email also recognized McClatchy employees with work anniversaries, including a reporter for the Lexington Herald-Leader in Kentucky, who has been with the company for more than 40 years. That reporter was among the lucky ones. At the Herald-Leader, which has won three Pulitzer Prizes over the past four decades, McClatchy slashed the newsroom staff by more than half.
While McClatchy journalists blasted the layoffs as a devastating loss for local news, company executives framed them as necessary to compete against social media influencers — and survive industrywide woes. Newspapers nationwide have struggled for decades, and some 40% of all local U.S. newspapers have closed shop in the past decade, including more than 130 outlets in the last year alone.
But more than other news companies, McClatchy is leaning into AI as the answer to the existential threats facing the industry.
A recent job listing for innovation lab writers notes the “company’s future depends” on an embrace of AI and the innovation lab is its “next-generation approach to content” where emerging technologies are leveraged to “fuel experimentation and productivity.”
The post also offered insight into the company’s future editorial direction, as it lays off investigative reporters, government watchdogs and other journalists focused on local news.
McClatchy officials didn’t respond to emails or a phone call seeking comment from Straight Arrow.
“From barbecue to bourbon, water sports to hiking, and golf to college sports, we are going to develop a steady stream of reader-focused, high-quality content for national and regional audiences,” according to the job listing. Producers will use AI to launch new brands “tied to dedicated communities of interest around travel, food, outdoor recreation, sports and even crime.”
‘Agentify the entire enterprise’
Even before the layoffs announced last week, McClatchy executives made clear they believe the future of the news industry is AI.
During a contentious, off-the-record virtual town hall in May, company executives said their business was in freefall — and positioned AI as its savior. Executives pleaded with skeptical journalists to get on board, and issued what appeared to be a threat: Embrace AI or get out of the way.
“We have a company-wide effort to agentify the entire enterprise,” McClatchy CEO Tony Hunter said during the town hall, a recording of which was obtained by Straight Arrow.
Among those efforts is the “content scaling agent,” an AI tool that uses a chatbot to repackage human-written news articles at varying lengths for different audiences — complete with reporters’ bylines.
Executives also discussed the launch of the content innovation lab, which was portrayed as a “big experiment” designed to reach readers outside of the company’s local markets. Some platforms created under the initiative will be local and others will serve national audiences interested in niche “passion topics” with possibilities for new brands “limited only by our imaginations.”
A reporter at The Kansas City Star, who was not laid off last week and spoke on the condition of anonymity due to retaliation concerns, called the innovation lab roles “AI content farm jobs” and accused the company of going all-in on AI lifestyle articles at the expense of local news coverage.
Reporter Allison Beck, who was laid off from the Miami Herald last week, told Straight Arrow that working for the legacy publication had become “just dehumanizing” as executives sought to squeeze more output from reporters and ignored rank-and-file workers “when we raised issues” about its AI tools.
Selling rosemary oil
McClatchy’s news sites have already been populated with AI-generated content.
Data from AI-detection company Originality, shared exclusively with Straight Arrow, indicated as much as 12% of articles published by The Kansas City Star between June and August were AI-generated. A similar share of articles published on the Miami Herald website were likely AI-generated, the analysis found. In some recent months, the percentage of AI-generated content on the sites reached 20%, Jon Gillham, Originality’s founder and CEO, told Straight Arrow.
Ultimately, Gillham said, McClatchy’s pivot to AI-generated content could erode trust with readers.
“I would rather not be getting my news from AI because news is a high-trust environment where the source of that text is important,” he said.
By running AI-generated content under the banner of legacy news brands, he said, McClatchy is “attempting to transfer the authority that has been built up over the years” to cheap lifestyle content “that doesn’t fit the historical focus” of the outlets.
Many of the AI-generated articles are about obscure health trends. An article published in The Kansas City Star on Tuesday — which several AI-detection tools concluded was likely created by AI — enlightened readers about a “high-tech Kegel craze.”
“If you’ve been quietly Googling why you leak when you sneeze, why postpartum recovery feels like a black box, or whether the Kegels you think you’re doing are the ones you’re actually doing — this is the walkthrough no one gives you at a six-week checkup,” the article said. “A category of small Bluetooth devices, paired with app-based games, is trying to answer those questions at home, and the details matter before you spend a dime.”
The article carried the byline of a New York-based content specialist for Trend Hunter, a company that McClatchy acquired two years ago. It says it uses AI to “glean insights into consumer trends.”
In some cases, legacy news brands are being used to peddle snake oil — or, actually, rosemary oil.
In a social media post on Wednesday, The Kansas City Star promoted $33.91 rosemary oil sold on the “TrendHunter Shop.” Rosemary oil, the post claims, “is having a hair-care moment.”
Other shop listings include a $249 “red light therapy cap” to regrow hair “without the hassle of messy serums” and eight ounces of “MAGIC Mushroom Coffee” for “clarity, balance and natural energy.”
Gillham concluded the McClatchy AI efforts are more about generating revenue than serving readers with information about their communities.
“It feels like it is a harvesting of the remaining authority, to squeeze out a few years worth of traffic,” he said. “They’re harvesting the goodwill that has been built up over years in return for short-term eyeballs.”
AI content for niche audiences
As legacy news outlets like the Miami Herald and The Kansas City Star adjust to having fewer writers on their staffs, readers should expect the share of AI-written articles to accelerate. In the last few weeks, each of the newly appointed innovation lab editors announced on LinkedIn they were hiring.
Among the new hires is Ian Kenyon, a sports journalist who, according to an X post, will be “focusing heavily on building Student Section, a new vertical centered on college sports fandom.” Another new hire, Maxim Alter, noted on LinkedIn this month that he was hiring “talented writers and producers” who are “excited to experiment with different ways to reach and engage audiences” as the company builds “new editorial brands from the ground up.”
New content director Lisa Cericola, who was named in the new-hire email, will lead a new publication called Saltwater South.
The “soon-to-be-launching brand,” Cericola wrote on LinkedIn, will focus “on life in the coastal South, a region I am passionate about and have covered for many years.”
Kenyon, Alter and Cericola didn’t respond to emails or LinkedIn messages from Straight Arrow seeking comment.
Coverage at Coastal South, Cericola wrote in a call-out for job-seekers, will include “local culture and traditions, food, natural wonders and more.”
A job listing for a “Saltwater South Personality & Influencer” offered up to $106,000 to use “AI-powered insights to grow passionate followers” interested in “golf, camping, backpacking, outdoor gear and seasonal events.”
As AI-generated websites like Coastal South become more prominent online, Gillham said it’s as important as ever to remember the golden rule of the internet: Don’t believe everything you see.
“It’s a well-established best practice on the internet to have a healthy level of skepticism for where you get your information,” he said. “This just adds another dimension to that.”
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