Local News Is Experiencing a Rebirth As AI Steps In To Fill Void Left By Disappearing Reporters

Source: Squarespace/ Unsplash

Local News Is Time And Energy Intensive

Across America, local journalism — once the backbone of community life — has been on life support for more than a decade. Shrinking newsroom budgets, corporate consolidation, and the rise of social media hollowed out small-town newspapers and city beat reporting. Local reporting is also time-consuming, energy-intensive, and sometimes inefficient, as sources need to be reconfirmed and articles re-edited multiple times — and sometimes even tossed — leading to a waste of human effort on stories that sometimes never even get published. Yet a surprising new player has entered the scene: artificial intelligence.

From automated city council recaps to AI-generated weather updates and sports summaries, local news is quietly being rebuilt by algorithms. Platforms like NewsBreak, Google’s AI-powered news experiments, and even small regional outlets are turning to automation to cover the stories humans no longer can. For towns that lost their local papers years ago, it’s an unlikely renaissance — though not without controversy.

Source: Squarespace/ Unsplash

AI Tools At Scale

AI tools can now sift through public data, social posts, and press releases to instantly generate news briefs. In theory, that means no pothole goes unreported and no local election goes unnoticed. For communities that have become “news deserts,” these tools offer something resembling the local coverage they’ve been missing for decades.

But critics argue that this rebirth comes with serious risks. AI can’t replace the judgment, ethics, or empathy of a human reporter. The same systems that can quickly generate stories can also spread errors, bias, or outright fabrications — as seen with the NewsBreak app, which was caught publishing inaccurate, AI-generated articles about local events.

According to an Associated Press report, the issue became clear last Christmas Eve when NewsBreak — a free app with roots in China and the most downloaded news app in the United States — published an alarming story about a small-town shooting. The headline read: “Christmas Day Tragedy Strikes Bridgeton, New Jersey Amid Rising Gun Violence in Small Towns.”

The problem? No such shooting ever occurred. On December 27, 2024, the Bridgeton, New Jersey Police Department posted a statement on Facebook dismissing the article — produced using AI technology — as “entirely false.”

The concern is that in trying to solve journalism’s labor crisis, the industry might be trading truth for efficiency. Automated systems can publish quickly and cheaply, but without careful oversight, they risk amplifying misinformation or stripping context from complex local issues. Still, it’s important to recognize that this isn’t a new problem — it’s an evolution of an old one. Local reporting is often underfunded, understaffed, and spread thin, leading to gaps in coverage or even factual mistakes made by human reporters under deadline pressure.

AI isn’t necessarily replacing journalism; it’s propping up what’s left of it. The real question isn’t whether automation should be used, but how it can be balanced — combining human editorial judgment with machine efficiency to preserve both accuracy and reach in an era when traditional reporting resources are rapidly vanishing.

What Does The Future Look Like?

Many media innovators see AI not as a replacement, but as a newsroom partner. Several Boston-area news publications are using artificial intelligence to generate articles for their websites, according to a human-written story by editor Dan O’Brien of MetroWest Daily News. When paired with editorial oversight, AI becomes a tool to restore coverage where it’s been lost, not erase the human element that makes it meaningful.

In this new landscape, the future of local journalism may not be purely human — but it doesn’t have to be purely machine, either. If done responsibly, AI could help rebuild what was lost: a sense of connection, accountability, and community that only local news can provide.