Patch’s AI Experiment: Thousands of Newsletters, Zero Humans

Channels with Peter Kafka

Everyone agrees that the decline/disapperance of local news is a big problem. No one agrees about the best way to solve it.

So let’s check in on a new AI push from Patch, the people who have been trying to do local news, online, at scale, for more than two decades.

Last spring, Patch CEO Warren St. John announced that he was running local newsletters for thousands of communities across the U.S., without employing a single human to make them. This week, I asked him how it’s going.

No one is going to mistake these “Patch AM” emails for a fully-staffed local news outlet — and in fact Patch relies on other local outlets to help populate their newsletters. But they also seem like a well-meaning effort to provide residents with something, as opposed to nothing. Or, in St. John’s words: He’s providing them with a Kind bar, not a 5-course meal.

Does that make you nervous about the future of news? Or optimistic? Somewhere in between? Take a listen and let me know what you think.

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