The Curious Case of the Fake Florida Newsroom

<p dir="ltr">When Florida reporter Kate Payne stumbled across a local news site called The South Florida Standard, something about it felt off. She&rsquo;d never heard of the outlet before and didn&rsquo;t know any of the journalists who were listed on its staff, even though their bios touted long careers in Florida journalism. The articles the site was publishing seemed like very normal local news stories, but they were often plagiarizing the reporting of other Florida news outlets. The coverage didn&rsquo;t have any obvious political agenda or bias. And Kate couldn&rsquo;t see a way the site was making any money; there were no ads or ways to subscribe.&nbsp;</p>

<p dir="ltr">What was going on here?</p>

<p dir="ltr">After Kate told Question Everything producer Zach St. Louis about this, he got sucked into the mystery&nbsp; &ndash; and ended up solving it. A bizarre whodunnit for our AI age.&nbsp;</p>

<p dir="ltr">Question Everything is a production of <a href="http://www.kcrw.org">KCRW</a> and <a href="http://www.placementtheory.com">Placement Theory</a>. Follow us on <a href="https://www.instagram.com/questioneverything.podcast">Instagram</a>: @questionverything.podcast. And subscribe to our <a href="http://questioneverything.substack.com">newsletter</a> please!</p>

<p dir="ltr">Kate Payne reported a version of this story for The Florida Trib, which you can read <a href="https://floridatrib.org/2026/05/14/the-rise-and-fall-of-an-ai-driven-local-news-outlet-in-south-florida/">here</a>.</p>

<p>Jeremy Carrasco is director of <a href="http://riddance.ai">Riddance</a> and the creator of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/@JeremyFindsAI/shorts">JeremyFindsAI.</a></p>

<p>Guests:</p>

<ul>

<li>Kate Payne, State Government Reporter at <a href="https://floridatrib.org/">The Florida Trib</a></li>

<li>Jeremy Carrasco, Director of <a href="http://riddance.ai">Riddance</a> and Creator of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@JeremyFindsAI/shorts">JeremyFindsAI</a></li>

<li>Joe Alouf, Turnaround Executive</li>

</ul>