Week of May 28, 2026

From the publisher’s desk

AI has been one of the hottest topics at every news-publishing conference I’ve attended in recent years.

How should we use it? Should we use it at all? How should we deal with the fact that most of these large language models use/used our content, without our permission? Will AI eventually cost us our jobs or our publications?

Additionally, the use (or, rather, misuse) of AI by some news outlets has led to some big problems. Here are some recent headlines:

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• “Reporters at McClatchy Withhold Bylines in Dispute Over A.I. Content.” As reported by The New York Times: “McClatchy, the newspaper chain behind publications including The Sacramento Bee, The Miami Herald and The Idaho Statesman, has started to use a new artificial intelligence tool that can summarize traditional articles and spit out different versions for different audiences. Its reporters aren’t happy about it. Journalists in many of the company’s newsrooms are now withholding their bylines from articles created by the new tool, meaning that those articles will run with a generic credit rather than a reporter’s name, as is customary.”

• “Sports Illustrated Just Deleted Every Article by One of Its Writers After Accusation of AI Plagiarism.” As reported by Futurism: “Sports Illustrated deleted an author—and his entire archive of articles—from its website following allegations of AI plagiarism. … The sports news site Sportico published an article featuring an original analysis of parlay bets made via the prediction market Kalshi. Two days later, on May 15, Sports Illustrated published an article — titled ‘Who is really winning on Kalshi parlays according to the data’—that regurgitated the same figures, without ever attributing the analysis to Sportico, as would be the normal and ethical thing to do.”

Yikes.

To be clear, I don’t think writers/reporters should use AI to write or construct their articles. That said, AI can be very helpful to journalists; for example, many of us use AI interview-transcription services, while some use AI to summarize public meetings.

Therefore, the RN&R, along with our sister publication (the Coachella Valley Independent), has developed an AI policy, and we’re requiring all of our employees and contributors to agree to its terms. We used the AI policy by The Beacon, a Kansas City-based news outlet, as our inspiration, with their permission.

Here’s our AI policy:

The Reno News & Review is dedicated to being the source of independent news, arts coverage, commentary and culture for the greater Reno/Sparks area.

We, like many news publications, are continuing to explore how we use the fast-evolving tools of our trade—including artificial intelligence (AI) and large language models. Our goal is to use these technologies to improve efficiency while upholding our editorial integrity.

How we may use AI

• Transcribing interviews using tools like Otter.ai. Transcriptions are always reviewed by a human for accuracy.

• Transcribing and summarizing public meetings. Transcriptions are always reviewed by a human for accuracy.

• Checking spelling and grammar.

• To brainstorm story angles, possible sources, potential questions and possible headlines—always with oversight and review by reporters and editors.

How we do NOT use AI

• AI does not write our stories. Every story is researched, written and edited by human journalists. In rare cases where a portion of a story is crafted by AI (such as a public meeting summary), it will be disclosed.

• We do not use AI for fact-checking or editorial judgment. Our reporters and editors are responsible for verification and for all conclusions.

• We do not use AI-generated photographs or illustrations. All visuals used in our reporting are created by human photographers, illustrators or designers.

We are committed to using AI thoughtfully and responsibly. Any uses of AI will be to enhance productivity, and never to replace writing and reporting—while always maintaining the highest standards of accuracy, transparency and editorial independence.

Cheers,

—Jimmy Boegle, publisher/executive editor