Key point: Don't blame AI. It was slop on these[1] sites before it became AI slop.

Before AI came along, the local Oregon "news" sites were acquired by national/multinational media companies. They fired the existing writer staff and hired the cheapest people they could to write stories. Articles were riddled with spelling and grammatical errors and the stories did not ask or answer some of the basic questions about the topic of the story.

You feed garbage into an AI and you're going to get garbage out.

I don't expect it to improve in this market because their goal is to sell ads and get eyeballs.

1. Sinclair, Allen Media, etc