The Chicago Sun-Times fiasco: A good reason that journalists and publishers should not let “AI” speak for us!

Why do we say this? Because AI’s information-blending machines can make up crazy things!

By DAVID CRUMM
Founding Editor of Front Edge Publishing

“So, what’s wrong with using AI? It’s very useful and I always remain in control when I turn to AI—I’m very careful,” a prospective author told me via Zoom this week. He was so convinced of AI’s powers that he already had used AI in a number of his own publishing projects.

“There’s nothing wrong with using AI to look for fresh ideas, new sources or ways of expressing yourself. So our staff often uses AI as an ongoing research tool. However—as a publishing house, we would never let AI speak for us in the text of a new book or on a book cover,” I said. “In your projects, you’re giving AI way too much power. Did you hear what just happened in Chicago this week?”

“What?” he asked.

And he’s a very well-read professional, so I realized that a lot of folks may have missed the catastrophic AI mistake at the esteemed Chicago Sun-Times. I write “esteemed,” because I counted Roger Ebert (of blessed memory) as a friend in serious journalism and, by extension, I never talked down about his blue-collar, populist tabloid that always seemed like the scrappy poor cousin to the big, establishment, broadsheet Tribune in Chicago.

Well, last week, the Sun-Times had to swallow a whopper of a mistake. AI was allowed to create a “summer reading” section for the newspaper that went way off the rails and made up a bunch of books that don’t exist.

And no one noticed—until copies of that nonsense reached the public.

The Sun-Times quite rightly is taking a lot of heat for unleashing this ridiculous article nationwide. But, we also need to note that some of the blame does belong to King Features, a unit of the publisher Hearst Newspapers, and Chicago-based freelancer Marco Buscaglia.

But come on!!

At the moment the Sun-Times is infamous for laying off staff, cutting budgets and apparently not leaving anyone in the newsroom who reads much literature. This special summer reading list attributed made-up books to the likes of Chilean-American novelist Isabel Allende as well as Percival Everett, who won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

Didn’t anyone notice the bogus books before this section of the Sun-Times was published?

The sure sign that nobody at the Sun-Times is actually checking over its publication was a brief post the newspaper finally put on its website about the snafu—not even ‘fessing up to this historic error and, instead, blaming it all on Buscaglia. What was that “sure sign” of the staff’s cluelessness? The page ‘fessing up was festooned with five brightly colored advertisements to donate to the nonprofit supporting the Sun-Times, because the newspaper is in such dire straits.

Can you imagine anyone finding that blame-game post, which unfairly tries to dump the whole fiasco on the freelancer, feeling moved to donate money to that newspaper?

If you care to read more, here are some links:

New York Times—A.I.-Generated Reading List in Chicago Sun-Times Recommends Nonexistent Books

Washington Post—Major newspapers ran a summer reading list. AI made up book titles.

PC Mag—Chicago, Philadelphia Newspapers Publish Reading List With Fake, AI-Generated Books