At or near the top of the list sits newspapers. For two centuries, these print institutions held steady, and for anyone who values them, it’s deeply unsettling to witness their current state.

Over the past decade, newsrooms have faced relentless cuts—not just in staffing, but in their ability to challenge authority. A range of factors, including legal risks, have muted journalism’s once-bold voice.

A powerful piece from Politico lays this out in stark terms, describing how reporters now adopt defensive postures and how editors—once fierce and fearless—have become cautious and subdued. Notably, the author repeatedly uses the word “swagger” to highlight the dramatic shift in both tone and substance over time.

“Newspaper culture lost its conviction as it became aware of its own diminution,” Jack Shafer writes in an article titled Cultural Cache Wanes. “Yesterday’s journalists believed the world revolved around their stories. Today’s journalists accept that their work no longer holds the same weight.”

That stings.

This may be one of the most honest and direct accounts I’ve seen on how journalism has evolved—and I believe it should be required reading for all media students.

ChatGPT Stalls

Just for curiosity’s sake, I posed a simple question to GPT:

“Why did newspapers die?”

The model paused—long enough that I thought it had frozen. I restarted the query, only to see the spinning indicator again for over a minute. That’s rare, and without Chain-of-Thought visibility, I could only guess what the LLM was processing.

Eventually, it responded:

“Newspapers declined primarily due to the rise of digital media, which fundamentally altered how people consume news. With internet accessibility, readers shifted to instant, free, and personalized content available online. Advertisers followed this migration, diverting revenue streams to platforms like Google and Facebook that offer targeted ads, undermining traditional newspapers' financial viability. Additionally, social media empowered direct engagement and rapid dissemination of information, challenging newspapers’ slower publication cycles. Paywalls introduced to recapture revenue often discouraged readership, while cost-cutting measures reduced journalism quality, accelerating audience loss. The younger demographic, preferring multimedia formats over print, further eroded newspapers' subscriber base. Lastly, mobile technology enhanced convenience, allowing users to access news instantly and conveniently, making printed newspapers less attractive. Together, these technological shifts, changing reader habits, financial pressures, and competition from digital platforms led to newspapers’ steady decline, marking the end of their dominance in the information landscape.”

Social platforms, paywalls, mobile access, digital disruption—all converged to overwhelm legacy publishers who couldn’t adapt quickly enough. Sure, similar forces killed off VHS makers and film companies in the digital age. But newspapers feel different. They aren’t just products—they’re meant to serve vital roles in democracy.

And that’s only part of the story. Many storied papers in older U.S. cities were already struggling—but held on—until AI emerged capable of generating the formulaic content editors had long trained reporters to produce. As David Brooks might put it, they were then hoisted on their own petards.

A Reporter Reflects

In a recent TED talk, a journalist shared his personal journey—and how newspapers have changed beyond recognition.

Years ago, he recalled being a young reporter in Connecticut covering a story about a power plant. He took a boat ride with a source to examine how nearby land might become vulnerable to development if utility-owned parcels were sold off due to deregulation.

Back then, he said, it was feasible to investigate such issues and inform the public.

Fast forward to today, and those tools and capacities are largely gone. There’s no one left to sound the alarm, to respond to the bat-signal—and the systems journalists once relied on are now ineffective.

Even more troubling, Chesto explained that when he asked ChatGPT to retrieve that old article, the model misinterpreted it completely—claiming the land wasn’t intended for hydroelectric use, when in fact, the opposite was true.

“In theory, you could over-develop and still pump water from the lake to generate electricity—but the AI missed all of that,” he noted, pointing out how context was lost. It reminded me of other LLM errors: neural nets can usually identify a frisbee or a ball, but struggle to understand how they move in real life.

The Mysterious Massachusetts Factory

Still probing, Chesto shared another example of AI missteps—what we often call “hallucinations,” or failures in interpreting complex data.

He recounted how a colleague received a tip claiming Dell employed 10,000 workers at a single facility in Massachusetts.

Humans had to debunk it—it was false.

“(The reporter) paid for this service to find out where the largest factory in Massachusetts was—and the bots got it wrong too,” he said.

So in effect, AI has replaced careful, methodical reporting with automated searches that don’t always yield accurate results.

And that’s where we stand.

Make no mistake—we’ve gained much from AI. But we’ve also lost something profound. This isn’t just another tech wave like cloud computing or big data—it’s a transformation that will reshape how we live, think, and govern. We must prepare to navigate it wisely.

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