Centre Daily Times becomes first NewsGuild newsroom to unionize over AI tool
The Pennsylvania newspaper's seven editorial staff members signed union authorization cards in response to McClatchy's Content Scaling Agent, which generates AI summaries of existing articles and republishes them under reporter bylines without consent.
Josh Moyer, a senior reporter at the Centre Daily Times in State College, PA, decided to unionize after reading about other McClatchy newsrooms protesting the tool. In an internal March meeting, McClatchy's chief of staff for local news said the company would use reporter bylines on AI-generated content if those reporters weren't protected by union contracts.
"If you're not in a union, your byline gets used; if you are in a union, we'll follow what the union says," Moyer recalled. "The company was essentially telling us we need to form a union to control what happens to our byline."
Last month, McClatchy voluntarily recognized the Centre Daily Times newsroom as a bargaining unit of The NewsGuild of Greater Philadelphia. It is the first newsroom under The NewsGuild-CWA to cite AI adoption concerns as the primary reason for unionizing, according to Jon Schleuss, the union's president.
How the tool works and what went wrong
McClatchy introduced the Content Scaling Agent to the Centre Daily Times in January. Reporters input up to three story links, specify an angle or tone, and select a target audience. The tool, powered by Anthropic's Claude language model, then generates an article draft.
From the start, reporters found the tool produced factual errors. Common mistakes included misidentifying elected officials, confusing neighboring counties, and inventing population figures. McClatchy's policy places responsibility on reporters to catch and fix these errors before publication.
Trebor Maitin, a service reporter at the Centre Daily Times, said the burden falls on him to verify AI output. "The AI doesn't know anything, so I have to really be on top of it to make sure that it doesn't produce anything false," he said.
In January, the newsroom agreed that reporters would publish at least one story per week using the tool, with a generic byline noting AI assistance. That changed in late February.
The byline policy shift
On February 23, Maitin received a Slack message from his manager hours before a story was set to run. McClatchy had announced a new byline policy: stories would now carry the reporter's name with a note that it was "produced with AI assistance."
Maitin viewed the change as misleading. The stated reason-that reporters would work harder on accuracy if their names appeared-struck him as disingenuous. "When our names go on a thing, it says that this article or video is from that person, but that is just not true in this case," he said.
The concern intensified in April when the McClatchy-owned Wichita Eagle began publishing CSA-generated stories with only reporter names, with no AI disclosure. The shift suggested McClatchy's standards for labeling AI content could continue eroding.
Despite reporter objections raised in editorial meetings and town halls, the byline policy remained unchanged.
Union leverage and labor action
Unionized McClatchy newsrooms responded with "byline strikes"-labor actions where reporters refuse to allow their names on AI-generated content. The Sacramento Bee, Miami Herald, Modesto Bee, and Tacoma News Tribune have all conducted such strikes.
Last month, The Idaho Statesman launched a day-long work strike protesting low wages and mandatory CSA use. Schleuss said union contracts have given McClatchy's organized newsrooms real control over the tool.
"Unionized newsrooms are the ones where McClatchy's AI slop gets a clear label. In non-union newsrooms, the AI slop may be carrying a real human reporter's byline," he said.
Why writers should pay attention
The Centre Daily Times union drive reflects broader concerns about how AI tools affect reporter bylines and professional reputation. Maitin is leaving the paper this month for a role with Report for America, citing concerns that AI-generated stories on his staff page could damage his credibility with future employers.
"I put my name on things that I ostensibly believe in and stand by," he said. "A prospective employer might look at my staff page and see all this AI-generated content. I don't think that makes me look very good."
For writers considering how AI tools fit into their work, the Centre Daily Times case shows the importance of contractual protections around byline use and content attribution. AI for Writers resources and understanding how generative AI and LLM systems work can help professionals navigate these issues.
The Centre Daily Times newsroom now has a seat at the table. Whether that translates into contract language protecting reporter bylines remains to be negotiated.
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