Who Writes Better Ledes?

Columbia Journalism Review · Bill Grueskin · last updated May 16, 2025 – 3:07 AM

To close out CJR’s weeklong coverage dedicated to AI and journalism, we’re tweaking this week’s Laurels and Darts.

As journalists increasingly rely on AI to write and edit stories, we want to test your ability to discern ChatGPT-written content—in particular, ledes. In each of these cases, we’ve asked the chatbot to write a one-sentence lede about a current event, in the style of a news site that had already published a story on the topic.

here today, more tomorrow

We’re launching briefing.center with a focus on the press and media.

And we’re adding Citizen Cartwright, a daily quick-read news summary by veteran Washington journalist Linda Cartwright.

We’re readying our first policy briefing.center, on energy and climate. We’d love to hear from you in what our other policy priorities should be.

You can use briefing.center as the center of your information management, or just one of your tools. We have a Slack channel for users, and we’re happy to discuss your connectivity needs.