Can AI help local newsrooms streamline their newsletters? ARLnow tests the waters

Scott Brodbeck, the founder of Virginia-based media company Local News Now, had wanted to launch an additional newsletter for a while. One of his sites, ARLnow, already has an automated daily afternoon newsletter that includes story headlines, excerpts, photos and links sent to about 16,000 subscribers, “but I’ve long wanted to have a morning email with more voice,” he told me recently in a text.

Though it could expand his outlet’s reach — especially, in his words, as email becomes increasingly important “as a distribution channel with social media declining as a traffic source” — Brodbeck didn’t think creating an additional newsletter was an optimal use of reporter time in the zero-sum, resource-strapped reality of running a hyperlocal news outlet.

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