There’s been much outcry over Chris Quinn’s column about his Cleveland.com newsroom using AI to write stories for a handful of local news reporters. That reaction says more about the anxiety in journalism and AI than it does about what’s really happening in Ohio.
A few things need to be said — and this is more an endorsement of creatively using the most powerful tool we’ve seen in generations than it is of Chris, who happens to be a lovely guy trying to save journalism and journalists’ jobs.
The idea that AI has suddenly replaced every reporter in Cleveland is simply not true. An overwhelming majority of reporters still write their own stories, as they always have. This is a model applied to a very intentional subset of reporters sent back into local communities, not some mandate.
Yes, this approach is explicitly designed to put boots on the ground in communities Quinn’s team had previously been forced to abandon. Nothing in American media has been hollowed out more brutally than local news coverage. If AI can handle routine drafting of stories to free up reporters to spend more time in neighborhoods, meeting sources and holding officials accountable, that’s not a threat to journalism. That’s a lifeline.
Seriously: If you lived in a community like those in Ohio that had been abandoned, would you rather have a reporter whose copy is worked by AI and reviewed by an editor, or no reporter at all?
That is the exact choice here.
Let’s be honest about the technology. Large language models are trained in part on deep, serious media archives, including decades of work from major news organizations. It is at least possible, and often likely, that the baseline writing these systems produce when properly prompted is equal to or better than what a reporter can deliver early in a new assignment. That’s not an insult to young journalists; it’s a reality of experience and exposure.
And one point everyone seems to be skipping: For generations the unsung heroes of newsrooms were the department editors who coached young reporters and rewrote dozens of stories every night. They didn’t just fix copy. They taught reporters how to think, how to structure an argument, how to ask tough questions, how to find the real story and then write those great pieces onto section fronts.
Those jobs were almost entirely eliminated long before AI, and with them went an irreplaceable pipeline of mentorship. An entire generation of journalists has come up without that coaching infrastructure. If AI can partially restore it — giving young reporters real-time feedback on structure, clarity and sourcing — that isn’t a concession to the machine. It’s an attempt to rebuild something the industry carelessly destroyed.
(As an aside, I use AI pretty much daily, and I value the type of coaching and feedback the Cleveland team is receiving. It is not perfect, but like a trusted colleague, we have grown together, and it has made me smarter and able to better serve my clients. I ask AI to review my work, grade it and help me improve it. In three years, I have not once regretted embracing the technology.)
The critics of Quinn’s approach are not wrong to raise questions, and, yes, there are a million more about where AI takes our society. For journalists, transparency matters, the accuracy risks are real and still unsolved, and the ethics of training data deserve scrutiny. These are legitimate questions, and newsroom leaders like Quinn leaning into AI are right to answer them directly and publicly.
But we cannot forget what sparked this conversation in the first place: Traditional media has only moved in one direction for 20 years, and that is toward extinction.
Print, television, radio, magazines and now even digital … all have contracted to the point many are no longer recognizable. For the lucky organizations, beats have disappeared. For others, entire newsrooms have vanished.
The debate about AI in journalism certainly will evolve, and we will read about colossal mistakes. But if we take a minute to digest the impact of an organization such as The Washington Post gutting nearly half its staff, we must search for tools that can keep the heart of our profession beating.
To not set out on that search for better, more efficient ways to tell stories and get more boots on the ground is short-sighted. Because the alternative to imperfect AI-assisted reporting, in many markets, isn’t a fully staffed traditional newsroom. It’s another news desert.
Kevin Whitmer, a top editor and leader at The Star-Ledger and NJ.com for 25 years, now owns and operates Whitmer Consulting, a digital media agency that helps clients grow audience, build authority and gain recognition in a world where marketing, media, strategy and technology intersect.
