Washington and Idaho journalists who work for newspapers owned by McClatchy Media are negotiating a new collective bargaining agreement. One of their biggest priorities is how the company uses artificial intelligence. That’s because McClatchy has been using AI for content generation.
“ We can't stop AI from happening, and we can't stop the company from trying to use it, but we can ensure that it's done in a fair and ethical way that aligns with our journalistic integrity,” said Kristine Sherred, the food reporter for the Tacoma News Tribune and co-chair of the Washington State NewsGuild. That’s the union that represents journalists who work for McClatchy-owned papers in Washington.
Sherred said she and colleagues at the News Tribune first noticed that McClatchy was using AI to create new content for their website when a photographer saw an article an intern had written had been turned into a shorter, slightly different article. That was in the summer of 2024.
Now, Sherred said they’re seeing articles published with AI that create a list of stories based on a similar topic.
Peter Talbot, the criminal justice reporter for the News Tribune, said a recent example of this was “Six recent criminal sentencings in Pierce County Superior Court,” which included stories he had written that talked about someone’s sentencing in a criminal case, summarized using AI.
Talbot said he often isn’t made aware that stories referencing his reporting are going to be published.
“ I'll get like an email notification about a story of mine that's published and I'll suddenly see like, ‘Hey, there's a roundup of the sentencing stories I've written from court.’ And it's like, ‘Oh, OK.’ I guess suddenly there was an article published last week of the last dozen stories I wrote, summarized by AI, I didn't know that was happening,” he said.
Talbot said these stories tend to have lower page views and have little to no interaction in the comments section below the story, compared to the original reporting he does.
“ There's a certain element of these listicles that kind of don't make a whole lot of sense. Like, what is the purpose of this?” Sherred said.
This has been done without the input of reporters, according to Talbot and Sherred, even though McClatchy job openings ask prospective reporters to “take advantage of opportunities to ethically harness and leverage artificial intelligence and other automation to enhance and elevate their work and to find efficiencies that free them to focus on source-building and high-quality, deeply reported journalism.”
Sherred said she uses some AI tools to support her work, such as ones that pull data on restaurants in the area applying for liquor licenses, but the company seems to be focused on its use for content generation.
McClatchy isn’t the only media outlet to use AI for content generation. Gannett, another large newspaper publisher, experimented with automated high school sports coverage in 2023.
If ratified, an AI clause would be new for Washington State NewsGuild members that work for McClatchy; other of the company’s news outlets have solidified protections regarding how the technology is used in their collective bargaining agreements, Sherred said, such as the Miami Herald.
“ One of the union's main goals is to ensure that workers’ jobs are safe and secure, and that in the case of newsrooms, that reporters and photographers are doing the work of reporting and photographing,” Sherred said.
Sherred said the union was able to get the company to agree to a provision that AI will not perform typical activities of newsroom employees, such as news gathering and public records requests and not to impersonate reporters with AI.
Still, Sherred said the union proposed that any AI-generated content be done at the direction of and with editorial review of humans, and the company came back to add that it would require this if the generated content "substantially relies” on the work of humans. Sherred said it is unclear what that means.
McClatchy has published an article about how it uses AI on its news sites, including that “Editors have complete control and oversight of content and can make adjustments at any time.”
The company did not respond to a request for an interview.
