Only a few weeks after David Hoffmann took control of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s parent company, he’s indirectly triggered one concrete change at the Post: earlier deadlines for its print editions, which still appear every day except Monday.
The new deadlines, revealed by Executive Editor Alan Achkar at a virtual editorial staff meeting on Feb. 24 and detailed in an e-mail several days later, are 3:30 p.m. for Page One copy and 2 p.m. for copy on inside pages, said one reporter who spoke with GJR on condition of anonymity. Those are 90 minutes earlier than the old deadlines, the reporter said.
The earlier deadlines are linked to the decision by Lee Enterprises, parent company of the Post, to move the printing of the paper to presses owned by the Missourian newspaper in Washington, Mo. from a facility owned by USA Today Co. (formerly Gannett) in Peoria, IL.
Washington is where David Hoffmann was born and raised. Hoffmann, who controls 53% of Lee’s stock, became chairman of the company on Feb. 5.
One of his other companies, Hoffmann Media Group, last year bought The Missourian and its press operations.
Journalists said Achkar didn’t explain the specific reasoning behind the deadline change, which is taking place despite the fact that Washington, Mo. — about 50 miles west of St. Louis — is far closer than Peoria to the Post’s core readership area.
Achkar didn’t respond to a voicemail and e-mail from GJR seeking comment.
AI content without human editors
Also at the Feb. 24 meeting, Achkar discussed a new offering on the Post’s website: a “Community” section that uses artificial intelligence to source online content and package it for the stltoday.com website without involving human editors.
The Community section, an initiative Lee executives were pursuing well before Hoffmann took control of the company, is not behind the stltoday.com paywall and is separate from other sections.
When a GJR writer accessed the Community home page on Feb. 26, it contained a note near the top saying, “This section features stories sourced from the community and made available to read for free. No subscription is required to access this content.” It did not mention AI.
Items on the page covered topics such as free pet licenses in the suburb of Hazelwood, property tax freezes for senior citizens in St. Louis, and community volunteering opportunities in the suburb of Town & Country.
The Hazelwood item contained promotional copy about the pet licenses and how to get them, apparently sourced from pages of Hazelwood city ordinances available online. The page also tempts readers with links to traditional Post stories (written by humans) that require subscriptions.
Near the bottom in small print was a disclaimer: “This content is sourced from Hazelwood. It reflects the author’s views and has not been edited by our newsroom. It may have been generated using AI assistance.”
Staffers told GJR the Community section prompted questions during the Feb. 24 meeting from journalists who worry that politicians or bad actors could use it to place incorrect or misleading information on the Post’s website. Some speculated that Lee eventually wants to use AI to replace traditional reporting roles.
“I think everyone’s a little bit scared about the AI. They don’t like the AI, and they’re nervous about Hoffmann,” said an editor who spoke to GJR on condition of anonymity.
Adding to the foreboding, Achkar wasn’t able to explain at the meeting how the AI-generated content might drive subscriptions or stronger engagement with the Post’s traditional reporting.
“Alan is very smart and gets the business and the editorial side, and he’s trying to balance both,” said the reporter who spoke to GJR. “He’s not hiding anything; he’s just doing his job and saying ‘here’s what coming down the pipeline, here’s what we have to do.'”
But union official David Carson, a staff photographer at the Post who serves as president of the union representing 52 of the paper’s staffers, says the union is seeking more clarity about AI usage from Lee’s management.
Carson sees trouble down the road.
“This ‘Community’ effort is like playing a game of journalism Russian roulette,” he said. “You know, at some point the AI is gonna publish something that embarrasses the company, or worse, gets us sued. One of the basic tenets of good AI use in journalism is keeping a human in the loop, and based on what we were told in this meeting, there’s no plan to have a human read any of this AI slop before it gets posted live to our site.”
Hoffmann hasn’t commented publicly about the Community project, but he made it clear he takes a dim view of AI overall during a Feb. 5 interview with the St. Louis Business Journal. He said current AI products simply regurgitate what they’ve been told, and their source is often wrong.
“Google something about yourself, you know, and they’ll have it wrong,” Hoffmann said.
Jack Grone is editor of McPherson, an independent journalism start-up based in St. Louis. He is a former reporter and editor for Dow Jones Newswires whose writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal and Barron’s. Follow him on X at @McPherSTL.
