Welcome to The Phoenix’s weekly digest. Every week during the quarter, you can expect our writers’ takes on some campus happenings.

This week, in an egregious and embarrassing failure, The Chicago Maroon published two articles written entirely by AI. Perhaps more embarrassingly for the University’s 134-year-old paper, nobody noticed until now—months later. Managing editor Owen Yingling responds.

There’s plenty of esprit de corps between UChicago publications. For example, I’ve seen writers from the right-wing Chicago Thinker chatting amicably with Chicago Maroon reporters at events, even though a departing Viewpoint editor admitted in an op-ed last spring that The Maroon once had a secret policy to avoid mentioning the Thinker in articles.

Point being: The Phoenix isn’t out to get The Maroon. We’re just worried about it. Back in November, The Maroon published an article in its sports section that, according to every AI detector I tried, was completely AI-generated.

Here are some excerpts:

• “What stood out wasn’t just the statistics; it was Giddey’s control. He orchestrated the offense with poise, attacking the paint, reading defenses, and setting up teammates while picking his spots to score.”
• “Giddey doesn’t need to be the flashiest player on the floor. He just needs to keep being the steady heartbeat of a young team that’s finally learning how to play the long game.”
• “Chicago’s perfect start isn’t a fluke; it’s the product of cohesion.”
• “Between handling growth and consistent success, Chicago’s goals are still evolving. But, with Giddey as the compass, the franchise’s direction finally feels clear.”

Nobody seemed to have noticed this until yesterday, when a post about it went viral on Sidechat. This is probably because no one read The Maroon’s coverage of Chicago-area sports—it’s not like they are getting any scoops about the Bulls or the Bears that the Tribune or The New York Times aren’t getting first.

This is an egregious and embarrassing failure by The Maroon. Our 134-year-old campus newspaper published an article stuffed with machine-generated sentence structures so apparent that you could tell from the very first sentence it was written by AI. How did this article get by an editor? Why did no readers notice it until now?

Yesterday, The Maroon released an apology that left these questions unaddressed and revealed that there were actually two AI-generated articles by the same author. Don’t worry, the answer is simple: The Maroon has a staff of 56 students and is run like one of those few remaining legacy newspapers, and so just like them, it is unprepared to deal with an influx of AI content from non-staff contributors. Similar scandals have hit those prestigious papers where many of these journalistic UChicago students would someday like to work and whose culture and structure they emulate at The Maroon, so why would The Maroon be any different? 

The most charitable reading I can make of the situation is that in this sort of hierarchical, siloed newsroom, a puff piece or two could slip by a couple of bored and too-trusting editors, and everyone was none the wiser. The alternative scenarios are too frightening to consider, given that any attentive reader could spot the AI syntax within a couple of sentences.

But just as interesting is the fact that readers didn’t seem to notice. 

For far too many of us, the last time we picked up a copy of The Maroon was during the encampment—or when our parents last came to visit. Despite having no shortage of talented editors and writers, The Maroon’s homepage is almost always plastered with news articles that are either irrelevant to most students on campus or filled with content better done elsewhere. Why? Like the borrowed organizational structure, presumably because these are the sorts of topics that “real” newspapers write about, and The Maroon would like to be a “real” newspaper. (Hence, the superfluous coverage of Chicago sports, rewritten University press releases, and often routine and box-checking local reporting.) The only thing that’s often missing is the unique stories UChicago students actually want to read. Of course it took so long for us to realize that The Maroon had an AI-written story. In fact, it’s a miracle that someone eventually did.

If The Maroon wants to learn something from the situation, its leadership should think long and hard about the way the paper is organized and the topics it covers, given that it is first and foremost a campus paper and not a stepping stone to The New York Times. TheMaroon has had some remarkable coverage over the last several years and written insightful articles that only a campus publication could—about topics as diverse as student government impeachments, the University’s real estate portfolio, Greek life, and the encampment. The element they all had in common was a tight connection to the campus and high relevance for the student body that they inform.

The Maroon must change its editorial process to avoid a repeat of this situation. But the best fix is to write more of these sorts of articles—ones that students want to read—so if something like this did happen again, at least people might notice.

Stay tuned for next week’s edition. In the meantime, if you have any thoughts, disagreements, or words of support, we want to hear them! Write to us at thechicagophoenix@gmail.com.