Publishing things online for free (as Ars does) is difficult business. I doubt they can realistically afford an "editorial team" which checks quotes. Paying the journalists is expensive enough.
"Apparently sick", you couldn't phrase it more accurately.
Kudos for firing them, the only valid course of action for a publisher.
We depended on an ecosystem of news and journalism to keep our polities informed.
However, if that ecosystem is starving it will increasingly fail to live up to its standards and we can expect these failures to impact us increasingly.
I am not defending bad journalists, nor creating an excuse to tolerate such behavior in the future.
I am describing the macro trend we are facing, the failure state we can expect, and asking what happens if nothing grows to replace it.
The NYT earns revenue through games more than journalism and ads. Wikipedia is seeing reduced visitors due to AI summaries, and this leads to lower donations. A review site I used went into a full paywall.
I don't really see how Ars or most other sites will be able to earn revenue and pay salaries in this bot first environment.
If this is true and necessary we might as well skip the middleman and have the news and journalists run the polities.
Advertisers only care about eyeballs and really bad press; AI increases the first and rarely causes the second.
They can simultaneously set standards for their staff -- as they should -- and retain professional standards for the more senior staff as well.
To remove responsibility from those more senior and make those more junior the only ones responsible is in any company a serious professional issue. Here it is also specifically contrary to the professional standards in their business area.
I see my parent comment is downvoted. Yet, this is firmly the ethical and professional and traditional stance. I don't believe AI or any random upcoming technology should change this.