Fears and hopes for artificial intelligence are found in almost every industry. Here in local news, we’re no different.

The promise is easy to understand: Profits are best made at scale, but local news is almost impossible to do well at scale – it involves paying writers to attend community meetings, ask questions and check facts, ultimately creating hours of work per story.

We’re already seeing AI news pop up in the Richmond area.

RICtoday’s parent company recently bragged to an industry publication that his company achieved profitability by removing humans. The group now sends 400 newsletters a day created with no human interaction.

Each newsletter “costs less than a dollar a day,” their co-founder said.

Likewise, Axios has entered into a partnership with the parent company of ChatGPT. In an article, they bragged that their AI tools were used to generate 43 different versions of the same chart for each Axios community’s local newsletter.

Our news team attends meetings, asks questions and participates in the civic discussion. We are on the streets and in courtrooms watching out for your tax dollars.

And yes, that work is expensive. That’s why we’re a nonprofit and rely exclusively on community support to stay afloat.

Last year we spent 85% of our budget on the real, live humans who produce our work.

In a world where it’s increasingly hard to tell what’s real, we’re building our identity around our team. They’re real. They’re Richmonders. And they work for you, every day.

Michael Phillips
Founder
mphillips@richmonder.org

P.S. – We’re working with an industry standards group to develop an AI policy to govern use of the technology in our newsroom. In an internal survey, every participant indicated they don’t want AI-written news stories in The Richmonder. Your 100% tax-deductible donation helps that community work flourish. Thank you!