Fake Bylines Reveal Hidden Costs of Local News : NPR
Major newspapers in Chicago, Houston and San Francisco are among those this week that have acknowledged they published dozens of items in print or online that appeared under fake bylines.
As was first disclosed by the public radio program This American Life, the items in question were not written by reporters on the staffs of the papers at all but by employees of what is effectively a news outsourcing firm called Journatic.
The episode is at once a professional embarrassment for the papers and a reminder of an inescapable truth about the cost of gathering local news: Sometimes when you cut costs, you can’t avoid cutting corners.
“How do you get police blotters from 90 towns? It’s not easy. But that’s what we do,” says Brian Timpone, a former television reporter and small-town newspaper owner who created what became Journatic six years ago.