News outlets distance themselves from Nota after plagiarism investigation
The Boston Globe has instructed staff to stop using Nota's AI tools and is ending its contract with the company. The decision follows a Poynter investigation that found dozens of articles on Nota's own news sites copied reporting, writing, and photography from other journalists without attribution.
Nota, an AI company that sells tools to newsrooms, launched 11 local news sites in September under the Nota News brand. The company shut them down on March 31 after the plagiarism was exposed. Work from at least 53 journalists across 29 outlets appeared in Nota News articles without proper credit, according to Poynter's analysis.
The two contract editors running Nota News had taken articles from local outlets, processed them through Nota's tools, and published the results under their own bylines. The editors said they believed the sites were internal experiments not meant for public consumption, though Nota promoted the project via press release, LinkedIn, and a Wall Street Journal interview.
Other clients reassess their relationships
The Institute for Nonprofit News, which negotiated discounts for members and promoted Nota's products, shared Poynter's findings with its members. The organization uses Nota's summarization technology but does not use its article generation tool, and human editors review all output.
Malea Hargett, editor of the Arkansas Catholic, said she would review the plagiarism accusations. Her outlet uses Nota only for headline suggestions and SEO optimization, not to generate content.
Some outlets that had already ended relationships with Nota remain listed as clients on the company's website. The Philadelphia Inquirer, KUOW in Seattle, CT Mirror, and Nashville Public Radio all told Poynter they had declined or discontinued use of Nota's tools. All four still appear on Nota's customers page.
A spokesperson for Stuff, a New Zealand news outlet, said the company was unaware its logo remained on Nota's website. Stuff ran a one-month trial in mid-2025 but decided against continuing due to efficiency and accuracy concerns.
Bob Conrad, publisher of This Is Reno, said he reached out to Nota after the plagiarism news broke. He continues using the company's tools for generating slugs, page titles, and excerpts. "I think generally it's a good product," Conrad said. "That works pretty well for us and saves us considerable time."
Training data arrangement raises questions
Nota CEO Josh Brandau said the company built its large language model, Polaris, by training open-source models against each other before refining them using "high quality journalism" provided with permission by clients.
None of the eight media organizations that answered Poynter's questions said they had given Nota permission to train on their data. The arrangement is unusual in the industry. Meta, by contrast, signed a $150 million deal last month with News Corp to license content for AI training.
Brandau has said the plagiarism stemmed from contractor error on a limited test project and was not related to Nota's software products. "We take full responsibility for the oversight failure that allowed this to occur," he wrote in a statement.
Fired contractors describe pressure and lack of guidelines
Nota fired Jorge Rodríguez on March 30 after Axios Richmond reported copied work on two of the 11 sites. The company terminated Isabella Rolz, the editorial director of Nota News, on April 7 after Poynter published its full investigation.
Rolz, a Columbia Journalism School graduate who has written for The Washington Post, produced stories for six of the 11 sites since June. Poynter found her byline on 41 plagiarized stories.
In her first interview since the plagiarism became public, Rolz apologized for taking content from other journalists. She said there was no document outlining editorial guidelines and that her bosses praised the team's work while pushing her to produce upward of 80 stories per week.
"I was so into the pressure of delivering," Rolz said. "I'll be honest; I wasn't even thinking about that."
Rolz said she saw the work as aggregation for reader convenience. She took pride in producing stories in both English and Spanish, and received LinkedIn messages from readers thanking her for the Spanish-language coverage. She acknowledged she should have credited the outlets whose work she was using.
Rodríguez, whose byline appeared on 30 plagiarized stories, has also apologized. He said he was unaware the sites were public and that Nota lacked clear editorial guidelines.
Company sought NDA before final payment
When Nota terminated Rolz, it asked her to sign a nondisclosure agreement before processing her final invoice. Two employment law experts said this likely violates labor laws.
Mary Inman, a founding partner of Whistleblower Partners LLP, said conditioning payment on signing an NDA "seems very illegal." Wages owed for past work cannot be made contingent on signing documents, she said.
Vilmarie Cordero, a shareholder at Arch Legal specializing in employment law, said refusing to pay a contractor could result in damages or penalties for breach of contract. "They cannot require an NDA before payment," Cordero said.
Brandau declined to comment on personnel matters.
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