The Washington Post is planning to let amateur writers submit columns — with the help of AI

Well, I sure won't subscribe!

With a mandatory subscription!

My company (not in media) keeps bleating we need to adopt AI everywhere we can because otherwise “we’ll get left behind”.

No, clarifying questions are not entertained.

Because some rich jackasses at the top hate paying employees.

Probably so it can take all the free articles people submit and regurgitate them back with a similar robotic style

I signed up for the paper copy. Best decision I made in years.

Most newspapers haven't been doing very well over the past couple of decades. I mean, most of them aren't even alive any more.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_newspapers

The decline of newspapers in the 21st century consists of the closure of many traditional newspapers (whether as printed or online versions), and a decline in the number of professional journalists. Meanwhile, a small number of newspapers with significant brand recognition have seen a significant rise in viewership of their online publications.

In the U.S. and Europe, newspapers are facing declining advertisement sales, the loss of much classified advertising, and precipitous drops in circulation. The U.S. saw the loss of an average of two newspapers per week between late 2019 and May 2022,[1] leaving an estimated 70 million people in places that are already news deserts and areas that are in high risk of becoming so.

The newspaper industry has always been cyclical, and the industry has weathered previous troughs. Television's arrival in the 1950s began the decline of newspapers as most people's source of daily news. But the explosion of the Internet in the 1990s increased the range of media choices available to the average reader while further cutting into newspapers' dominance as the source of news. Television and the Internet both bring news to the consumer faster and in a more visual style than newspapers, which are constrained by their physical format and their physical manufacturing and distribution. Competing mediums also offer advertisers moving images and sound. And the Internet search function allows advertisers to tailor their pitch to readers who have revealed what they are seeking—an enormous advantage.

The Internet has also gone a step further than television in eroding the advertising income of newspapers, as — unlike broadcast media—it proves a convenient vehicle for classified advertising, particularly in categories such as jobs, vehicles, and real estate. Free services like Craigslist have decimated the classified advertising departments of newspapers, some of which depended on classifieds for 70% of their ad revenue.[4] Research has shown that Craigslist cost the newspaper industry $5.4 billion from 2000 to 2007, and that changes on the classified side of newspaper business led to an increase in subscription prices, a decrease in display advertising rates, and impacted the online strategy of some newspapers.[5] At the same time, newspapers have been pinched by consolidation of large department stores, which once accounted for substantial advertising sums.

From 2005 to 2021, about 2,200 American local print newspapers closed.[14] From 2008 to 2020, the number of American newspaper journalists fell by more than half.[14]

By March 2018, it was acknowledged that the digital circulation for major newspapers was declining as well, leading to speculation that the entire newspaper industry in the United States was dying off.[31] Circulation for once promising online news sites such as BuzzFeed, Vice, and Vox declined in 2017 and 2018 as well.[31][32][33] In June 2018, a poll conducted by the Pew Research Center revealed a 9% decline in digital circulation of newspapers during the year 2017, suggesting that revenue from newspapers online could not offset the decline in print circulation.[34]