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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.

ôI mean, the bylines are just bizarre because theyÆre on topics a) of
which I have no understanding and b) IÆve been to Oregon once in my life
for a very, very lovely holiday in Portland,ö the United Kingdom-based
writer told OPB.

The Ashland Daily Tidings ù established as a newspaper in 1876 ù 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 OregonÆs fentanyl crisis (ôMeasure 110 might be in for a repealö), homelessness in Eugene (ôAll In Lane County homeless program delivers impressive resultsö), and the food scene in Portland (ôThe fourth best
burger in the U.S. is in Portlandö) ù 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.

ôIt seems quite terrifying,ö said Minihane, an actual journalist and
author who learned he had his identity stolen after OPB contacted him. ôI
have friends who live in Portland, but IÆve never been to another part of
the state, so I just donÆt know quite how it came to pass.ö

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 OregonÆs 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 CountyÆs current phase of local media, including the ongoing,
bizarre operation of the Ashland Daily Tidings, could be seen as beginning
in 2017. ThatÆs when Rosebud Media and its owner ù an entrepreneur with technology, broadcast and advertising experience ù 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 MediaÆs 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 didnÆt 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 OregonÆs 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 ù a family-owned newspaper chain across
rural parts of Oregon and Southwest Washington ù stepped in after
RosebudÆs closure, and earned heaps of praise when it announced plans to
open a local newspaper that would replace the Mail Tribune.

That hope didnÆt 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 ù now
the fourth-largest newspaper owner in the country ù had been on a
Northwest newspaper buying spree and boasted of its commitment to ôhigh quality, community focused journalismö 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 ù only
for more journalists to lose their jobs shortly after the sale ù is not
unique to Jackson County. Northwestern UniversityÆs 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 MedillÆs 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 MedillÆs 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. ôTry to learn Artificial intelligence and donÆt curse in AI. Do your hard work and
Update your skills,ö they wrote in a LinkedIn post.

Two of the writers on the Daily Tidings website are actually
correspondents for the London-based Daily Mail. Another two have actually worked as journalists in Southern Oregon. One supposed writer has no
online presence as a journalist outside the Daily Tidings website.

An Oct. 25, 2024, screenshot of the Ashland Daily Tidings' contributor
page. It lists eight people as working for the small Southern Oregon media outlet. The majority of the writers had their names and images stolen and
did not work for the company.
An Oct. 25, 2024, screenshot of the Ashland Daily Tidings' contributor
page. During OPB's reporting on the use of artificial intelligence by the website's operators, many of these contributors were removed from the
page.

Ryan Haas / OPB

OPB used various methods to track down all of the listed reporters on the Southern Oregon webpage, including searching social media and contacting
former employers. After OPB began reaching out to people credited on the TidingsÆ stories, more than half the staff disappeared from the page and
their bylines were replaced on existing stories. Three journalists who responded to OPBÆs requests for comment said they had no idea their names
or images were being used to produce stories for the Daily Tidings.

ôPlagiarism, I think itÆs called,ö quipped Bert Etling, the former editor
of the Daily Tidings who now runs the digital nonprofit media outlet Ashland.news.

Etling, who started his local journalism career in 1982 and was laid off
in 2019 by Rosebud Media, noticed the revived Daily Tidings soon after it emerged because his own reporters saw work remarkably similar to their own appearing on the webpage. The stories would have fresh headlines and the writing would be tweaked, but the reporting and quotes from sources would closely match work Ashland.news had previously published. OPB staff
members have also had their work taken and republished on the Daily
Tidings website with marginally changed sentences.

ôThey just put it in a blender and then pour it out on their page,ö Etling said. ôItÆs maddening.ö

Since artificial intelligenceÆs wider adoption by the public in the past
two years, journalism has been a regular target for scams that further
threaten the business of producing news. A New York-based journalist collective, 404 Media, was among the first to notice a trend of fraudulent websites taking real stories and using AI ôspinnersö to rewrite the
articles with the goal of grabbing web traffic. Other reporting revealed a Serbian DJ who pretended to operate a news outlet in a Minneapolis suburb,
only to leave local readers confused when theyÆd click stories to find AI- generated content that had nothing to do with Minnesota.

The Daily Tidings appears to be the first time an Oregon news outlet has
stolen the identities of real journalists to trick local readers with AI- generated content. The goal is apparently to deceive Oregonians into
giving clicks ù and the resulting ad revenue ù to whoever is behind the website.

The source
The Daily Tidings wasnÆt the first time Joe Minihane had his work, or his identity, ripped off using AI.

In March, someone took over the webpage domain for MinihaneÆs personal
website after he didnÆt pay to renew his ownership. Whoever grabbed the
site filled it with mundane prose that vaunted MinihaneÆs ability as a journalist ù and his ability to write essays. The purpose for the website takeover appears in links subtly embedded throughout, which offer to sell
high school students essays for their homework.

ôI find it fascinating when the bots write about you in the third person,ö
he told OPB. ôI canÆt get to the bottom of these things.ö

A similar type of theft may be behind whatever is happening at the Ashland Daily Tidings.

The Daily Tidings claims on its website that it was acquired by Difference Media, LLC, in 2021. Difference Media was founded by a father and son in
Texas to promote Christian music. Speaking to OPB, a company official said
they were not aware of the Daily Tidings and that the company owns no newspapers.

OPB reached out to the operators of the Daily Tidings through the
websiteÆs contact form and listed email for the paperÆs news desk, but
received no reply.

The alleged timeline of the Difference Media purchase also does not line
up with the Daily TidingsÆ prior ownership.

When owner Steve Saslow closed Rosebud Media in 2023, the web domain for
the Ashland Daily Tidings and the Medford Mail Tribune became inactive, creating an opportunity for the fraudulent version to replace it.



In his first interview since closing the papers, Saslow told OPB he had
his attorneys pursue litigation against whomever is behind the AI-written stories for copyright infringement. The lawyers told him the fraudulent
acts are coming from outside the United States, likely in China, and they described the legal quest as akin to ôpursuing a phantom.ö

ôThey do this apparently with either existing or defunct newspapers around
the world,ö Saslow said. ô[My lawyers] said you could go and spend all
kinds of money, and trying to find them would be a needle in a haystack if
we could do it at all.ö

Saslow opted not to spend that money chasing down the fraudsters. ThereÆs little doubt money is the reason behind the fraud, however.

The Daily Tidings website, despite its reliance on copyright infringement
and stolen identities, presents readers with banners and pop-up videos
from major advertisement-serving companies on the internet, such as
Google, YieldMo and the Trade Desk. Display ads like those on the website
can earn the siteÆs operators a few dollars for each 1,000 appearances the
ads make, potentially making the endless churn of stolen stories a
lucrative business. ItÆs unclear exactly how much money the Daily Tidings
is generating each year from such ad placements.

After being alerted to the scam by OPB, Google took action against the
Daily Tidings website by removing its ads from specific pages on the
website the tech giant viewed as violating its terms of service.

ôWe have strict publisher policies that govern the types of content we
allow to monetize. Upon reviewing the site in question, we have taken
action to demonetize the pages where we identified violations of these policies,ö spokesperson Nate Funkhouser said in an email.

The main landing page of the Daily Tidings continued to serve
advertisements from Google and other companies as of Dec. 2. Other advertisement-serving companies that appear to be providing income to the
Daily Tidings did not respond to OPBÆs requests for comment.

The future of local journalism
Saslow said he started Rosebud Media because he saw the old models for
local journalism had created a business that only seemed to recede as
online platforms advanced. From his perspective, local readers would be
the big losers if nothing changed.

ôIt really was about the true sense of journalism,ö he said. ôThatÆs why I named the thing Rosebud. It was a joke from the movie æCitizen Kane.Æ He thought he could control everything and the answer was no, thatÆs what you donÆt want.ö

A desire to experiment led Saslow to partner with Sinclair Broadcast Group
to produce some video content with his former reporters. Saslow hoped the experimentation with print, video and online stories would be an
attractive package for advertisers who want the maximum number of eyeballs
for their dollars. While that effort didnÆt translate to advertisers
writing bigger checks, Saslow said he isnÆt giving up his goal of finding
a formula that makes local journalism financially stable. As early as
2025, he said, heÆd like to return to Southern Oregon with a new venture
that ties together local and national issues in a way that could be a
single stop for readers inundated with information.

ôYouÆve got to have this mix of everything that would affect a personÆs
life,ö Saslow said. ôThereÆs going to be a breakthrough where somebody basically is able to evolve news to something that is completely
different.ö

The future of local journalism in Oregon likely depends on whether its decadeslong retrenchment continues under the growing pressures of Silicon ValleyÆs push into artificial intelligence, or if the remaining media
outlets in the state can convince their readers that human-verified
information is a necessity. Ashland.news, the digital startup led by
Etling, is taking some decidedly old-school approaches to help his
publication. Even as his reporters are competing with social media posts
from the zombified Daily Tidings, Etling said he is constantly thinking
about how he can prove to the people living in the Rogue Valley that local journalism is worth saving.

ôPeople had it easy with the subsidized newspaper,ö he said. ôIt was
subsidized by capitalism-assisted democracy ù by selling sofas and
mattresses on the pages of your newspaper and making it really cheap to
get. ThatÆs gone away, and itÆs not coming back.ö

Etling doesnÆt know what will replace journalismÆs long dead revenue
sources of classified advertisements and public notices, but he believes
the nonprofit model Ashland.news follows ù one built on giving well-
reported local stories to a local audience ù could hold some clues.

Rather than chasing profits, the company has tried to offer its readers a simple value proposition: We live here, and we want to tell you stories
about this community.

Ashland.news doesnÆt have billions of dollars in venture capital behind it
like the largest artificial intelligence companies, but it does have an
edge those companies donÆt have: people who live in the community theyÆre covering. This year, the outletÆs staff marched in the Fourth of July
parade. The response surprised Etling.

ôPeople were hollering out, æWe love Ashland News!Æ and æThank you!Æö he
said. ôIt was really gratifying.ö

The company also recently sent a print edition ù a surprising move for a digital outlet ù to 17,000 mailboxes in Ashland and nearby Talent as
another way to reach people who may not know their local journalism is at
risk of going away.

Those curated appeals to local readers may be working, too. Etling
estimates Ashland.news has around 4,750 newsletter subscribers ù more than three times the number of people who subscribed to the Daily Tidings when
he was editor.

https://www.opb.org/article/2024/12/09/artificial-intelligence-local-news- oregon-ashland/

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