The Washington Post is preparing to welcome content from Substack authors and other independent contributors, but there’s a new condition: all submissions must first be screened by an artificial intelligence system before reaching the paper’s editorial team, according to four individuals familiar with the initiative who spoke to The New York Times on Tuesday.
This strategic move is part of an effort to revive the newspaper’s financial stability after facing consecutive years of significant financial losses.
“In a presentation to employees on Wednesday morning, Post publisher Will Lewis painted a stark picture of the Post’s finances, revealing that the publication has lost $77 million over the last year and has been bleeding digital readers for several years,” the Post reported in May 2024.
Jeff Bezos, the paper’s owner and Amazon founder, has reportedly been having difficulty reversing the organization’s downturn, according to the Times. The paper now intends to broaden its opinion content by including pieces from freelancers and journalists from smaller regional publications. These submissions are intended to “appeal to readers who want more breadth than the Post’s current opinion section and more quality than social platforms like Reddit and X,” the Times reported.
However, all potential contributors will be required to work with an AI platform called Ember. As the Times described it, Ember will assist writers with various tools, including a “‘story strength’ tracker that tells writers how their piece is shaping up, with a sidebar that lays out basic parts of story structure: ‘early thesis,’ ‘supporting points’ and [a] ‘memorable ending.’”
One source told the Times that the AI program is also designed to suggest prompts to help writers add “solid supporting points.”
{Matzav.com}