Since people here know just about everything about news media
(and when we had Tomalhe and, sniff, sniff, and sniff, it
was closer to 99.999%), I had asked if anyone recalled the
announcement about a similar service, but competitor to,
"Patch" with its hyper-local coverage.
No one here recalled it.
Today, I saw a reference in an NPR story discussing "zombie"
(their term) newspapers that pop up in lots of neighborhoods
during elections...
A fascinating story which I suspect many people here already
knew about, but NPR digs in [a].
Anyway, they also were kind enough to verify my recollection:
" Back in 2012, Timpone created a service called Journatic, used briefly
by mainstream newspapers, that relied upon a core of reporters and an
army of freelancers to try to report on real estate sales, school
lunches, city council meetings, high school sports and other events.
Timpone also promised state-of-the art artificial intelligence. The
service's credibility was dinged when This American Life revealed not
just its use of bots but content mill workers far from the regions the
newspapers served. They were often based in Asia, writing under fake
bylines."
[a]
https://www.npr.org/2022/10/31/1131422576/republican-conservative-democrat-media-news-newspapers-illinois-proft-timpone
_____________________________________________________
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