Cleveland Plain Dealer
Introduces AI-Generated News Items

| published March 2, 2026 |

By Thursday Review editors

The Cleveland Plain Dealer’s newest feature is a small collection of articles prepared each day under the sub-heading or the byline “Advance Local Express Desk.”

The breezy byline and column name make these news items forthright, bullet-point, and super relevant—not unlike ABC World News Tonight’s between-the-break “The Index,” a rapid-fire recap of a few interesting or perhaps important reports from around the country or around our world.

But this newest innovation at the Plain Dealer—a venerable Ohio newspaper now approaching two centuries in age—has its newsroom staff unsettled and its readers deeply divided: “Advance Local Express Desk” is a euphemism for articles written entirely by the newspaper's AI application, and then quickly checked by someone on the Plain Dealer’s editorial staff. Each of the AI-generated news items ends with a disclaimer which states that the piece was “produced with assistance from AI tools and reviewed by Cleveland.com staff.”

Recently introduced by the paper’s editor, Chris Quinn, the innovation isn’t exactly popular with the newspaper’s staff, many of whom are openly skeptical, and worry that the AI tool is a harbinger of tough times ahead: a phasing-out of writing and reporting jobs, layoffs similar to what have been seen at the Washington Post (The Post recently dismissed about 300 employees in a single day), and the eventual death of journalism by professionals.

But Quinn has defended the Plain Dealer’s decision by offering a view of what he sees as the next generation of journalism: “Artificial intelligence is not bad for newsrooms. It’s the future of them.” And, “by removing writing from reporters’ workloads, we’ve effective freed up extra an workday for them each week.”

But Quinn’s defense of this new and more aggressive use of AI to streamline newsrooms has met with skepticism from both industry experts and from many other editors, most of whom have derided Quinn’s remarks as unacceptable and blockheaded. Philip Lewis, editor for HuffPost, offered this opinion of Quinn’s defense: “An editor for a newspaper encouraging “removing writing from the reporters’ workload’ should just resign.”

Many major newspapers in the U.S. use AI to some degree in their daily operations and for a variety of functions. But what is notable about the experiment at the Plain Dealer is that it is widely considered by much of the journalism community the first time a newspaper is openly using AI to write articles.

Founded by Joseph William Gray in early 1842, The Cleveland Plain Dealer is one of the oldest operating newspapers in the United States, and has remained the largest newspaper in Ohio since the 1960s. Like almost all American newspapers, the Plain Dealer suffered mightily from the mid-1990s onward as the internet and other electronic sources of news began to eat into its subscription base and newsstand sales, thus undercutting advertising. At its peak in 1995, circulation was roughly 403,000; by 2019, its weekday circulation was approximately 95,000, and its Sunday edition 171,400.

Conversely, its digital followers have increased steadily through the teen years, and by 2020 its main news website, Cleveland.com, was attracting close to 10 million users each month.

Newspapers are fighting to hang on to readers, while also struggling to remain relevant. Some newspapers have vanished completely, and in many cities where there were once multiple newspapers, only one paper survives.

Major newspaper shutdowns in recent years include: The Cincinnati Post, which ceased publication in 2007; The Baltimore Examiner, which shuttered its operations in 2009; the Long Beach Register and the Los Angeles Register, both owned by Freedom Communications, and both closed in 2014; and the Daily American in West Frankfort, Illinois, which shut down in 2015. In 2016, the Tampa Bay Times (formerly the St. Petersburg Times) bought and immediately absorbed the Tampa Tribune after a long, bitter, arduous battle that nearly killed both newspapers. And on January 1, 2026, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ceased printing altogether, replacing its newspaper with an online-only business model.

For the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the battle for survival has been, at times, ferocious, though its ability to attract online readership has served as a model for other papers. As the Plain Dealer’s circulation decreased over for the last two decades, so has its staff: in 1995 the newspaper employed over 400 people, but now it has only 71 employees. This may be a win compared to some city newspapers where fewer than 40 people are employed to run the entire operation.

Quinn recently told the Washington Post that he is hopeful that the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s experiment will work, outlining how the AI model is actually much more sophisticated retooling of a very old journalistic principal where reporters or stringers or citizens in the field would “call-in” by telephone with raw notes or raw information in real time, and then that information would be rewritten by someone in the newsroom or in the department, then submitted to an editor for more checking or rewriting. Quinn says this is basically the same process, only faster: reporters would submit the facts electronically, the AI tool would generate a quick draft, and then, an editor would review that AI draft for changes or modifications.

In theory, this would allow for double or triple the content from the field—three or four stories a day from a reporter, as opposed to two, or one. And a lot more time for the reporter in the field to stay on the move and on the lookout for another newsworthy item.

But reporters at the Plain Dealer and other newspapers are concerned that this is a truly slippery slope, and will invite the process to become dumbed down to the point that “citizen callers” are interacting only with an AI application, with little or no oversight by editors and almost no journalistic judgment or integrity—never mind any form of “accountability journalism” largely considered a key component in democracy. A steady conversion to this form of AI-writing, some journalists point out, may also mean the death of investigative writing and long-form exposes. Can an AI tool develop a relationship of trust with a whistle-blower, or a deep background source?

But Quinn also defends AI in the newsroom by pointing out, with some degree of optimism and correctness, that AI can in fact be much faster at checking the validity of information, proofreading, accuracy, and even grammar and spelling than a human. All that’s needed is a quick double check by a senior editor or specialized editor after AI has done its job. In Quinn’s view, this will not only allow more time for reporters to report, but may also in the end save their jobs by letting AI handle the drudgery of writing and proofing.

In the meantime, journalists elsewhere will watch this experiment unfold in the newsroom and digital backchannels of the Cleveland Plain Dealer to see if this portends a better—or worse world for American reporting and journalism.


Related Thursday Review articles:

Washington Post to Cut 300 Staffers; Alan Clanton; Thursday Review; February 4, 2026.

Tampa Bay Times Buys Tampa Tribune; Ends Two Paper Era; By R. Alan Clanton, Thursday Review editor; May 4, 2016.