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A reader recently asked why we didn’t cover a shooting that had taken place in Pleasanton on a Friday night.
We hadn’t heard anything about a shooting, which was unusual, so we reached out to the Pleasanton Police Department.
The shooting didn’t happen.
In a letter to the editor, the reader explained, “Friday evening, an online Pleasanton community was chattering about a shooting in Pleasanton, (Inglewood) and Hopyard Road. A 24-year-old man shot his father. I checked it out, listened to the report with an eyewitness commenting with a video of police activity at the scene.
“The reported shooting, with video and an eyewitness, in Pleasanton Friday evening appeared to be authentic; it was not. Pleasanton police reported there were no shootings or reports of gunfire.”
Artificial intelligence is a useful innovation, and many already use AI to check spelling and grammar or to take notes during meetings.
It’s also potentially dangerous. AI can quickly produce “deepfakes”, which are very realistic, yet fake images or videos like the one our reader saw.
Depending on the training content used, AI can also amplify biases, which can affect news selection and content.
Then there are “hallucinations”, when AI just makes up information and presents it as fact.
Human journalists are essential to combatting risks such as bias, misinformation like deepfakes and inaccuracies like hallucinations. Human editors verify facts, establish policies for AI use and make the ethical judgments necessary to maintain credibility and public trust.
But as the advances in and use of AI are increasing at a breakneck speed, the number of independent news organizations and journalists is decreasing at an almost equivalent rate.
For centuries, newspapers relied on advertising revenue to employ journalists. But the business model changed with the rise of the internet. “Big Tech” companies like Google, Meta and Amazon spent 25 years extracting data from site users. With this personal data, they are able to sell digital ads that are targeted to people based on their preferences, interests and leanings.
In the same 25-year timeframe, a little over a third of news outlets across the country have closed and, in California, 65% of journalists have lost their jobs.
According to the 2025 State of Local News Report published by Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, “Almost 40% of all local U.S. newspapers have vanished (since 2005), leaving 50 million Americans with limited or no access to a reliable source of local news.”
The number of journalists has dropped at an equally staggering rate. Muck Rack, which maintains a media database and provides tools to journalists, reported a “stunning collapse in local reporting” since 2002 – a 75% drop in the number of local journalists. There were 40 journalists per 100,000 people nationwide in 2002; now there are only 8.2 per 100,000.
California ranks 41st out of 50 states for the number of reporters with 6.1 per 100,000.
According to the data, California’s population of 39.43 million has approximately 2,133 journalists.
One consequence of continuing news outlet closures and independent publishers “calling it quits at an alarming rate”, as the Medill report authors wrote, is a significant increase in “news deserts” – areas that lack consistent local reporting.
In the State of Local News Report, researchers said there are 212 counties in the U.S. without any local news source.
“In another 1,525 counties, there is only one news source remaining, typically a weekly newspaper,” they reported. “Taken together, in these counties some 50 million Americans live with limited or no access to local news.”
We are an independent publisher that, instead of calling it quits after years of financial losses, transitioned to a nonprofit.
As evidenced by our reader’s story, misuse of AI is already happening. Our community needs and deserves journalists to combat the misinformation and inaccuracies and deliver fact-based, local news.
Facts matter. We need trained journalists to make sure the facts are real before readers see them. We need your support more than ever to ensure that residents of our community have access to quality news to live a more productive and engaged life.
Keep fact-based, human-produced news in the San Ramon Valley by making a donation at danvillesanramon.com/donate.
