Cleveland.com Embraces AI to Free Reporters for In-Depth Journalism, Sparking Debate Over Automation in Newsrooms

In a bold move that’s stirring both praise and controversy, Cleveland.com—the digital publishing arm of Ohio’s historic Plain Dealer newspaper—has fundamentally restructured its newsroom workflow by offloading writing duties to an artificial intelligence system. The innovation, dubbed an “AI rewrite specialist” by editor Chris Quinn, has transformed how the publication covers news across multiple Ohio counties, raising questions about the future of journalism in an age of automation.

The strategy is both simple and revolutionary: reporters on specific beats covering Lorain, Lake, Geauga, and most recently Medina County, are no longer responsible for drafting articles. Instead, they focus exclusively on what Quinn calls “the core of journalism”—in-person interviews, cultivating sources over coffee meetings, attending community events, and gathering firsthand information. The AI system then transforms this raw material into article drafts that editors review before reporters provide their final approval for publication.

According to Quinn, this arrangement has effectively gifted each reporter an additional full workday every week—time previously consumed by the mechanical process of writing that can now be devoted to deeper reporting, more extensive source development, and richer storytelling. “We’ve taken the chore of writing off their plates,” Quinn explained in a February 14 letter to readers, positioning the move as a pragmatic solution to resource constraints while maintaining journalistic quality.

The implementation began last year as a strategic response to Cleveland.com’s inability to fully staff coverage across expanding geographic areas. Rather than abandoning coverage of these communities or producing thin, rushed reporting, the newsroom opted to leverage technology to maintain comprehensive local news presence. The model has since expanded from its initial rollout to encompass additional counties, suggesting early success in achieving its stated goals.

However, the innovation hasn’t been without controversy. Quinn’s February letter was prompted by a journalism student who withdrew from a reporting position at Cleveland.com after learning about the AI integration. The editor used the incident to launch a broader critique of journalism education, accusing professors of instilling an irrational fear of artificial intelligence in their students. “They’ve been told repeatedly by their professors that AI is bad,” Quinn wrote, suggesting that academic institutions are failing to prepare students for the technological realities of modern newsrooms.

This tension highlights a broader debate roiling the journalism industry: how to balance technological efficiency with traditional journalistic values. Critics argue that removing reporters from the writing process risks diluting the distinctive voice and perspective that human journalists bring to their work. They worry about potential homogenization of news coverage and the loss of the nuanced storytelling that emerges from the intimate connection between reporting and writing.

Supporters, including Quinn, counter that the AI system handles only the mechanical aspects of writing—organizing facts, constructing basic sentence structures, and producing serviceable drafts—while reporters maintain ultimate editorial control. The human element remains central to story selection, source cultivation, fact verification, and final content approval. In this view, AI serves as a productivity tool rather than a replacement for journalistic judgment.

The Cleveland.com experiment also reflects broader economic pressures facing local news organizations. With advertising revenues declining and staffing levels shrinking across the industry, many publications are exploring technological solutions to maintain coverage breadth. The AI rewrite specialist represents one approach to this challenge—using automation to handle routine tasks while redirecting human resources to areas where they add the most value.

Industry observers note that Cleveland.com’s approach differs significantly from other AI experiments in journalism. Rather than using AI to generate articles from scratch or to produce content based on press releases and public data, the publication has created a hybrid model where AI augments rather than replaces human reporting. This middle-ground approach may prove more palatable to skeptical journalists and readers than more aggressive automation strategies.

The success of this model could influence how other news organizations approach similar challenges. If Cleveland.com can demonstrate that AI-assisted workflows produce high-quality local journalism while enabling reporters to focus on deeper, more meaningful coverage, other publications facing similar resource constraints may follow suit. Conversely, if quality issues emerge or reader trust erodes, it could serve as a cautionary tale about the limits of newsroom automation.

As artificial intelligence continues to advance, the journalism industry faces fundamental questions about the nature of news production and the role of technology in storytelling. Cleveland.com’s experiment suggests one possible future—one where AI handles routine tasks while human journalists focus on the irreplaceable elements of their craft: building relationships, exercising judgment, and connecting communities through meaningful stories.

The coming months will reveal whether this technological intervention strengthens local journalism or represents an uneasy compromise between economic necessity and journalistic ideals. What’s certain is that the conversation about AI in newsrooms has only just begun, and Cleveland.com has positioned itself at the forefront of this transformative debate.

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