Thursday, October 15, 2026
Less than a week after laying off more than ninety journalists across thirteen newspapers, McClatchy executives announced new hires for the company's AI-powered Content Innovation Lab. Technical analysis of the Miami Herald and the Kansas City Star found that AI-generated content accounted for up to 20 percent of articles in some months.
Publishers reported AI licensing as meaningful revenue in first-quarter earnings, and Meta has signed deals with People Inc. and USA Today Co. among others. Almost all the money has gone to large newspapers and wire agencies. The training data did not come from a smaller share of everyone else.
The Community NEWS Act has passed both chambers and is on the governor's desk. It pays local outlets a refundable tax credit for every journalist they employ — twenty thousand dollars for the first five, fifteen for each one after — funded by capping the corporate deduction for executive pay above a million dollars.
Outlets that spent a century competing are pooling coverage of the beats none of them can staff alone. The arrangement works because the thing they are sharing was never what made them distinct.
A single operator with a camera, an editing suite and a beat is becoming the dominant local video news format, and the economics finally work.
When a town loses its newspaper, borrowing costs rise, local contracts get worse and small businesses lose their cheapest form of accountability. The market is finally noticing.
In mid-sized American cities, glossy local magazines are being revived by owners who treat them less like media businesses and more like civic institutions with ad pages.