Will AI replace local news?

Every local newsletter operator should be asking: one to two years from now, can AI just do what I'm doing? I asked myself that early, and it's why I build brands instead of just newsletters.

My short answer: AI will replace the parts of local news that are just aggregation. It won't replace the real local person, and it makes running a local brand cheaper for the people who use it well.

What does AI change for local media?

Cost, mostly. The old local news model died because it was too expensive. It can be reinvented digitally and with AI. A few ways that shows up in my own work:

• Building newsletters from existing content. Legacy outlets that have published for 20 or 30 years can turn what they already have into a quality newsletter quickly with lightbreak.
• Covering more ground. One operator's newsletter covers four small cities, while his site, with AI-generated local pages, covers 40 cities and about 4 million people.
• Cloning markets. New city brands are templated, so launching one is mostly setup.

Coverage that used to take a reporter now takes a transcript. Pull the city council meeting video from YouTube, give the transcript to Claude, and you can do better than a $70,000-a-year journalist sitting in the room. A peer of mine runs a system like that by himself in about an hour a day. Back then my own team of four was still barely getting the article side down.

My estimate is that one editor could publish five to 10 articles a day per site, or 40 to 50 a day across four sites, as long as a human reviews, tags and schedules each one. For how I use AI to write and run the newsletter itself, see can AI write and run a local newsletter.

Can a small AI-run newsletter beat a well-funded one?

I think so. One venture-backed local newsletter company launched about 10 years ago with no AI. Its whole model was humans making it really good, and it raised a lot of money. From what I can tell, it's never really made money. Raising money crushes you with requirements, overhiring and spending.

Run that playbook with two differences: bootstrap it, and use AI. If our revenue is 30% of theirs, we can still be a much better business, because our expenses are 5% of theirs. Those are my beliefs about a competitor, not their books.

Another traditional chain I compete with supposedly does around $30 million in revenue, with margins around 10% because it has something like 70 employees going to city council meetings. That's a rumor I've heard, not a number I can verify.

Doesn't AI also mean AI newsletters in every town?

It already does. Someone launched AI-written local newsletters in 300 cities, and a lot of people in the space freaked out. The content was garbage, and the way he acquired readers looked shady because he wasn't paying for Facebook ads for all of them.

Content alone doesn't win. An automated newsletter nobody finds has no value. The difference is acquisition: Meta ads plus the signup survey. And everything in this model is make or break on sales.

I'm also wary of AI-written news articles on a website. A big AI company launched a bunch of local news sites and got busted because its AI was stealing quotes, and the whole thing shut down. If I run an automated local site, I'd rather bail on news articles and stick to restaurants, real estate and businesses, where that risk mostly isn't there.

Will people just ask a chatbot what's happening locally?

Someone could do that 12 months from now. I doubt most people will. In my experience people are far behind technologically, and even when something is possible they just won't do it.

There's also the ease problem. A newsletter gives you everything you can glance at in two minutes. I don't think AI is going to be easier than that.

What can't AI replace?

The person. Build the audience, build the trust, be the real person in town that people know. People can meet you at events and know you're not AI. That's why the brand aspect (social media, podcasts, events) is so key.

"People are only going to trust what they know locally."

If all you do is aggregate events, you should be worried, because that's too easy for AI. Add local flavor, be the personality people see around town and at the chamber, and do social video. AI slop can't film somebody in a local restaurant or at the town fair.

Relationships also get you news AI can't reach. Nothing on the internet says a new Raising Cane's is coming to a certain corner, but the economic development person knows because the contractor knows. Get that human to human, break it yourself, and then AI takes it from you. Keep a Notion of everyone you meet and become the super connector.

In a world where anyone can build software with AI, the real moat is audience. Build it first, and it gives you options for how to use it.

Can AI help local newsrooms instead of hurting them?

Yes. Costs forced outlets to cut staff, and less got done. With AI, the behind-the-scenes work still gets done. You just don't need people to do it. Reporters can spend all their time on reporting that matters at little extra cost beyond the tools.

That doesn't mean AI writes your stories. AI can scrape public data, but it can't go investigate and bring hidden stories to light. It does the annoying stuff most people spend their time on.

Will AI hurt trust in local news?

It hurts trust in the internet generally, which helps local. By 2027 I don't think people will trust the internet. People will split: lots of things will end up almost completely AI, and for other things they'll want to know for sure it's real. Events, Instagram and video with an actual local person provide that. Local media owners are the ones who can bring people together.

That's why I push local business owners to run the newsletter in their own towns as the human face and voice. A fully AI newsletter in every town isn't going to work.

What about AI in the inbox?

Changes like Google's AI inbox will hit everyone eventually. The slowest, most old-school newsletter operators will be the last to care, and that buys them years.

What should a local operator do now?

1. Use AI to cut the cost and time of production, with a human reviewing what goes out.
2. Put a real local face on the brand.
3. Build public surfaces (Instagram, website, podcast) that carry your name, with social video.
4. Spend on acquisition, because content nobody finds is worth nothing.
5. Run in-person events and build relationships, because that's where trust gets proven.