This week’s newsletter features a look at the newest front in the ongoing labor battle at The Baltimore Sun since the Sinclair Broadcast Group chairman David S. Smith gained majority ownership: the use of generative AI to “write” political analyses.

In our media round-up this issue: The New York Times continues spreading anti-trans misinformation in its op-eds, new report on journalist killings in 2025, Substack gets into the predictions business, post-Washington Post layoff updates, Cleveland newsroom editor defends his outlet’s use of generative AI, and the Federal Trade Commission picks and chooses “objective” outlets.

—James Salanga

The Baltimore Sun ”once again disparaged … human reporters and their work” by publishing two AI-generated political analyses, the newspaper’s union said.

The Sun’s AI usage is an extension of a power struggle that’s been brewing inside the nearly 200-year-old paper’s newsroom since it was acquired by JTF Publications back in 2024. After the acquisition, The Sun’s coverage shifted right. It dissolved its features section, failed to disclose its ties to its majority owner while covering his involvement in local politics, increased its coverage of youth crime, despite crime’s sustained decrease in Baltimore, and more.

“Management is constantly telling us to work harder, take on new responsibilities, and give up our rights,” the Baltimore Sun Guild told The Objective, “so to see our hard work suddenly replaced by incoherent slop one day is just extra demeaning.”

Read the full story.

🤔 NYT Opinion (continues to) launder medical misinformation. Journalist Erin Reed has fact-checked the paper’s latest opinion column by anti-trans writer Jesse Singal. While an op-ed, it plays into the Times’s storied history of underplaying criticisms of its coverage of trans people — days before trans Kansans had their drivers’ licenses invalidated.

📈 More media workers were killed in 2025 — 129 — than in any of the past three decades that the Committee to Protect Journalists. Eighty-six of those journalists were Palestinians killed by Israel.

📊 Substack is partnering with Polymarket to use prediction markets to inform journalism. But, as Sports Media Guy reporter Brian Moritz writes, this introduces many potential ethics violations, including insider trading.

💸 The Baltimore Banner, Axios, and others are looking to pick up where WaPo journalists left off. The Athletic hired six sports writers, and serious investors spoke about expanding DC local coverage after the metro desk was gutted and the sports desk shuttered.

🧪 In more Post news: The Washington Post Opinion desk defends – checks notes – weed-killer Round-Up. Context: A study supposedly proving the chemical’s safety was retracted for being ghostwritten by Monsanto employees in 2017.

🤖 Cleveland news editor Chris Quinn told the Columbia Journalism Review that generative AI is used as a “reporting tool,” not as a replacement for reporters. Quinn’s op-ed earlier this month explicitly stated journalism schools were failing their students by not teaching them to embrace AI.

⚖ Objectivity for me but not for thee: The Federal Trade Commission has been picking and choosing which “media bias” watchdogs it investigates, targeting NewsGuard and Media Matters for discouraging advertisers from buying up space where ads might be seen alongside right-wing messaging. Phil Napoli argues all these regulatory actions are tools to circumvent the First Amendment.

Have a story you think we should include in this section of next week’s newsletter? Let us know here or by responding to this email.

This issue is by James Salanga and Marlee Baldridge. Thanks for reading. We’ll have more for you next week.

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