Week of July 2, 2026

From the publisher’s desk

Earlier this week, a story in a publication called The Editorial, about a right-wing media organization buying up a bunch of Alabama newspapers—and replacing the reporting with AI-generated content—caught my eye. A bunch of journalists were sharing it on social media, so I clicked on it and read it.

Joshua Benton, the senior writer for Nieman Lab, a journalism support and research organization, had an experience similar to mine. He writes:

According to the link aggregator Sill, 18 people I follow on Bluesky had shared a link to it within a few hours.

The headline was a grabber: “The Ghost Paper That Ate Alabama: How a Media Startup Killed 47 Weekly Newspapers and No One Noticed.” It was a site named The Editorial, whose name rang a vague bell for me.

I clicked through. The subhead: “Inside the rise and collapse of 1819 News, the right-wing media chain that bought up rural weeklies, fired their staff, and replaced them with AI-generated content.” …

The story in The Editorial, by Elena Marchetti, was meaty—about 1,900 words—and seemed to feature some good on-the-ground work. It reported that, in 2023, a new company named Alabama Community News LLC spent $3.2 million—money it got from 1819 News—buying up 47 different weekly newspapers in small towns across the state. The goal: to “use the papers’ subscriber lists and advertising relationships to build a statewide conservative media empire.”

I read the piece from The Editorial, was horrified and a little depressed, and moved on with my day.

Fortunately, Benton’s job is to report on journalism shenanigans such as these, so he did some digging. And it turns out that this story—a story that I, and myriad journalism colleagues, thought was legit—was completely fake.

As Benton notes, this piece—and other fake pieces he wound up finding on The Editorial—were very believable. He writes:

These stories are, to me, surprisingly good. Not good as in true, of course, but good as in effective at keeping up the illusion of reality. For me, they have only a light whiff of AI writing—mostly when people are quoted. (Example: “‘This is not a newspaper,’ she says. ‘This is a ghost.’”) The newspaper names are real; there are lots of real names and institutions sprinkled in among the fakery. They’re long and they hold together.

Benton does an excellent job of showing how much of what is on The Editorial website is complete B.S., and he tracks down (as best he can) who’s responsible for the site, and why those responsible may be doing what they do. The phrase “international geopolitical intrigue” would apply to his findings; I highly recommend reading his story.

But the reason why I mention all of this here is not the international geopolitical intrigue. I mention it because it’s a stark reminder of how much made-up, deceptive fake news is out there—and how “good” it’s getting in terms of being able to fool even the most knowledgeable of people.

My mistake: I didn’t verify that The Editorial was a legitimate news source. (To add to the confusion: Benton points out there is indeed a real, unrelated news source named The Editorial.) Fortunately, I didn’t share or mention the piece, on social media or otherwise, before now.

Learn from my mistake: Unless you’re sure a news story is coming from a source you know and trust, verify, verify, verify. The fakers are getting better and better.

Cheers,

—Jimmy Boegle, publisher/executive editor