XPost: or.politics, alt.journalism.newspapers, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh   
   XPost: sac.politics, talk.politics.guns   
   From: yourdime@outlook.com   
      
   If you believe the internet, in his first month at the Ashland Daily   
   Tidings, reporter Joe Minihane skied the slopes of Mount Ashland, ate at   
   15 restaurants in Roseburg, hiked the Owyhee Canyonlands in Malheur   
   County, took in Autzen Stadium and Multnomah Falls, and visited the   
   Neskowin Ghost Forest on the Oregon Coast.   
      
   And sure, more than 1,200 miles of travel to write 10 stories in a month   
   might seem excessive for a local outdoors reporter who was new to his   
   Southern Oregon job, but who could argue with his output?   
      
   Minihane could.   
      
   “I mean, the bylines are just bizarre because they’re on topics a) of   
   which I have no understanding and b) I’ve been to Oregon once in my life   
   for a very, very lovely holiday in Portland,” the United Kingdom-based   
   writer told OPB.   
      
   The Ashland Daily Tidings — established as a newspaper in 1876 — ceased   
   operations in 2023, but if you were a local reader, you may not have   
   known. Almost as soon as it closed, a website for the Tidings reemerged,   
   boasting a team of eight reporters, Minihane included, who cranked out   
   densely reported stories every few days.   
      
   And those reporters were covering a lot more than local news. They dove   
   into Oregon’s fentanyl crisis (“Measure 110 might be in for a repeal”),   
   homelessness in Eugene (“All In Lane County homeless program delivers   
   impressive results”), and the food scene in Portland (“The fourth best   
   burger in the U.S. is in Portland”) — essentially any issue that might   
   draw attention from Oregonians.   
      
   The reality was that none of the people allegedly working for the Ashland   
   Daily Tidings existed, or at least were who they claimed to be. The   
   bylines listed on Daily Tidings articles were put there by scammers using   
   artificial intelligence, and in some cases stolen identities, to dupe   
   local readers.   
      
   “It seems quite terrifying,” said Minihane, an actual journalist and   
   author who learned he had his identity stolen after OPB contacted him. “I   
   have friends who live in Portland, but I’ve never been to another part of   
   the state, so I just don’t know quite how it came to pass.”   
      
   The mysterious takeover of a more than 140-year-old news outlet offers a   
   warning of how local news is at risk of disappearing in Oregon’s rural   
   communities, and what an online future supercharged by the next   
   unregulated wave of technology from Silicon Valley companies may hold for   
   news consumers.   
      
   From the ashes, more ashes   
   The number of people working in journalism in Jackson County, like the   
   entire country, has been precipitously declining since adoption of the   
   internet began to grow in the early 2000s. Most analyses of this era point   
   to the rise of consumer-focused tools like Craigslist, which took a   
   roughly $5 billion bite out of local news through the loss of classified   
   ads, as the start of a long slide in the news business. Fact-based news   
   reporting, which takes time, also has failed to keep up with online   
   demands for the latest content available at the touch of a device. Readers   
   and the advertising dollars that follow them have flocked to social media   
   and other online platforms.   
      
      
   Jackson County’s current phase of local media, including the ongoing,   
   bizarre operation of the Ashland Daily Tidings, could be seen as beginning   
   in 2017. That’s when Rosebud Media and its owner — an entrepreneur with   
   technology, broadcast and advertising experience — plucked the Mail   
   Tribune and the Daily Tidings from the grip of the hedge fund-backed   
   GateHouse Media, which later merged with another powerhouse publisher,   
   Gannett.   
      
   The move offered some hope that Rosebud Media’s vision would preserve what   
   remained of the local journalism that had been pared back by large   
   companies focused primarily on profits.   
      
   Related: The state of Oregon's local media in 4 charts   
      
   The hope didn’t last. In January 2023, after several initiatives meant to   
   stabilize the papers, Rosebud Media closed down both for good. The move   
   meant an unceremonious end to Oregon’s first Pulitzer Prize-winning   
   newspaper, the Mail Tribune, which earned the award in 1934 for public   
   service by condemning local politicians who supported racial grievances of   
   the Ku Klux Klan and the violent takeover of local government coming out   
   of the Great Depression.   
      
   The East Oregonian Media Group — a family-owned newspaper chain across   
   rural parts of Oregon and Southwest Washington — stepped in after   
   Rosebud’s closure, and earned heaps of praise when it announced plans to   
   open a local newspaper that would replace the Mail Tribune.   
      
   That hope didn’t last either. In late October, EO Media Group announced it   
   was selling its roughly dozen newspapers, including the Rogue Valley Times   
   in Medford, to Carpenter Media Group. The Mississippi-based company — now   
   the fourth-largest newspaper owner in the country — had been on a   
   Northwest newspaper buying spree and boasted of its commitment to “high   
   quality, community focused journalism” before laying off an untold number   
   of reporters and editors in the Portland suburbs, Central Oregon, Eastern   
   Oregon, Southern Oregon and Everett, Washington.   
      
   This cycle of a new owner buying a local newspaper every few years — only   
   for more journalists to lose their jobs shortly after the sale — is not   
   unique to Jackson County. Northwestern University’s Medill School of   
   Journalism, which tracks media outlet sales and layoffs in an annual   
   report, estimates the year from 2022 to 2023 saw a rapid loss of 7,000   
   newspaper-related jobs across the country compared to just a few hundred   
   the year before. According to Medill’s data, nearly every county east of   
   the Cascades in Oregon has two or fewer local news sources. Most have a   
   single source, and six counties have no local news outlet at all.   
      
   The result of all these consolidations and job losses is less information   
   being reported locally for Oregonians, particularly those in rural   
   communities who are seeing papers close at troubling rates, according to   
   Medill’s mapping of news deserts.   
      
   Plagiarism, by any other name   
   The mysterious emergence of AI invaders on the local news scene is a new   
   development in Oregon, and the Ashland Daily Tidings website appears   
   designed to hide its true operators.   
      
   After Rosebud Media closed in 2023, the Daily Tidings website emerged   
   again with a claimed staff of eight contributors, none of whom are   
   reporters working in Southern Oregon. Two of the writers have sparse   
   social media presences that suggest they live in South Africa. Neither   
   responded to a request for comment from OPB, though one did share a social   
   media post in November praising artificial intelligence. “Try to learn   
   Artificial intelligence and don’t curse in AI. Do your hard work and   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)