A right-wing media chain tried to replace 47 newspapers with AI. They all died.

Get stories like this sent to you every Friday: Subscribe for free.Link: The Ghost Paper That Ate Alabama: How a Media Startup Killed 47 Weekly Newspapers and No One Noticed, by Elena Marchetti in The EditorialThis is a horrifying story: 47 small, local, weekly newspapers were acquired by a man with ambitions to create a new conservative media empire. He fired much of their staff and replaced them with AI — with predictable results. Subscriptions fell, there were accuracy and ethics issues, and the papers even lost their printing contracts because local print shops didn’t want to print slop. The media empire fizzled out.This isn’t the first time someone has bought into the AI marketing — and had a disregard for human expertise — enough to make a foolish staffing decision. Companies as big as Ford have sacked humans in favor of AI only to backtrack with their tails between their legs and re-hire. But here the aftermath was news deserts in 43 of the poorest communities in America. When…