WHY DID NO ONE AT THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES READ A FAKE, AI-CREATED BOOK LIST?
Dire consequences are ruining my former paper after a freelancer — an ex-Tribune guy, naturally — was allowed by King Features to use AI and create 10 imaginary books on a summer reading list
When I wrote columns for 17 years at the Chicago Sun-Times, too many bosses were creepily interested in my prose. The executive editor wanted pieces sent to him at home when I mentioned Jerry Reinsdorf. From the publisher to the sports editor to the lawyers to even the circulation department — my gosh, what is he writing about the Bears, Bulls, White Sox, Cubs and Blackhawks?
Was I uncomfortable? Well, back in journalism school, one prominent lesson is that EVERYONE should read EVERYTHING before stories are published. Let everyone in the house read it. Then, let them run it. If not, I would raise hell.
But times have changed so recklessly that the Sun-Times has been reduced to a state of ruin in 2025. After years of woe, NO ONE read a syndicated seasonal edition titled: “Heat Index: Your Guide to the Best of Summer.” The section was a product of a third-party supplementer, King Features, which employed freelancer Marco Buscaglia — a former editor and reporter at the Tribune Co., of course — to produce content that included 15 books. Turns out 10 of Buscaglia’s selections were fake.
He used an artificial intelligence agent to create the reading list.
AI lied. Buscaglia lied.
What if a former Tribune guy killed the Sun-Times because NO ONE read the section? Melissa Bell is in charge of the Sun-Times as the CEO of Chicago Public Media, with an impressive history of launching the Vox website with Ezra Klein and Matthew Yglesias. For some reason, Bell did not study the special edition herself, apparently believing in King Features, a company owned by Hearst Communications. She did not assign such duties to editors. In a lengthy story about the mishap, Bell blamed her circulation department for making a “Human mistake.”
“Members of our Sun-Times circulation department, who worked with King Features to select and insert the section, trusted that work licensed from King Features would live up to a level of editorial rigor that matches the standards of Chicago Public Media,” Bell wrote. “Our circulation department did not submit the pages for review to anyone on our editorial team, nor acknowledge in print that the content was created by a third party. Instead, the department packaged it under a Sun-Times banner and sent it to homes across the region.”
Why would the circulation department submit “pages for review” to editors? Shouldn’t editors want to see the pages themselves for review? Isn’t this ass-backwards? Sheila Reidy is the vice president of circulation. Corrina Rose is a director of circulation sales and marketing. They are responsible for the undoing of the Sun-Times. “The circulation department made these choices because it was trying to help keep our finances as stable as possible,” Bell wrote.
So the CEO says circulation was watching money at a paper that recently bought out, under threats of layoffs, many of its premier writers. Why couldn’t Reidy and Rose have scanned the section and sent it to the editorial desk for better eyesight? Isn’t that what professors taught in journalism school? Chances are, everyone in the place is exhausted from trying to keep the Sun-Times alive. When I resigned from the paper, because we waited too many hours for our stories to be posted online from the Beijing Olympics, more than 330,000 papers were sold each day. Today, the print product barely exists.
Months ago, Bell communicated with me about a meeting that never took place. If she had offered a column job, and I had taken it, what would have happened last week? I’d have broken a media record for quitting a place twice in one career. Bell has a thankless job. She has only 24 hours in a day, 168 hours in a week. She took over a 1-16 football team, but someone on her editorial staff should have fact-checked the books and other items. I am blaming King Features and Hearst for hiring Buscaglia.
“I am completely at fault here — just an awful oversight and a horrible mistake,” Buscaglia wrote on Facebook. “I’m not really sure I bounce back from this situation career-wise. I have a lot of stories left in me but I am fully accountable for what happened and will have to endure the effects, whatever they may be.”
He was fired by King Features, which also bled when the Philadelphia Inquirer published his book trash. He told the Sun-Times: “Stupidly, and 100 percent on me, I just kind of republished this list that (an AI program) spit out. Usually, it’s something I would not do. I mean, even if I’m not writing something, I’m at least making sure that I correctly source it and vet it and make sure it’s all legitimate. And I definitely failed in that task.”
Years ago, when he began a blog, Buscaglia’s biography included these words: “After years of writing thoughts and opinions in small journals, blank pieces of paper, old notebooks, the margins of newspapers, index cards and Microsoft Word, Buscaglia began blogging at marcobuscaglia.com in 2010, becoming the 67,998,532th person on the planet to think that someone else gives a s— about his or her opinion on life, family, politics and food. He lives in Chicago with his wife, their four children, a dog, a cat, a goldfish and the occasional rodent that makes its way into his 77-year-old house.”
The rodent will live. A newspaper is about to die.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.