Scroogequest – Page 5 – thecumbriachronic.co.uk

CRUMBRIA: 19.09.2025

READERS of the Evening Snail, Barrovia, are warned that AI is now being used by Churnalists to fill the dying, if not dead, local rag.

The company is using ChatShit, according to my grumpy ex-Sub Editor, who calls me from The Furness Railway.

It is here where he hands over the bulk of his CN payout, spending rainy autumn afternoons watching the Abbey Road traffic slashing by and ruminating on the car crash that is the modern-day Evening Snail.

“They’ve got robots writing the paper now! They won’t have to pay them anything!” he cackles down a pub phone before the pips go.

He’s right… as this redacted profile of one of the paper’s newest recruits shows.

Automating a job whose success depends on one human speaking to another and accurately reporting what they said is typical of the backward short-term thinking that characterises the paper’s owners, famed penny-pinchers, Scroogequest.

Dahn sarf, Scroogequest have just lost a member of staff who went on sick with stress in May and quit after 23 years.

Brave Candia McCormack went public on the shit show.

She said she had wanted a phased return to work, but the company REFUSED to provide any staff to support her working reduced hours.

Reading between the lines, Candia has been lumbered with getting out the monthly glossy magazine Cotswold Life entirely on her tod.

She hinted that she may have been expected to use AI-generated articles to fill the mag.

She said: “AI is being introduced into publishing as a way to help ease the increasing pressures being put on writers and editors; cuts are being made across the board; deadlines brought forward; league tables ever looming; and it’s generally becoming a far less joyful experience all round.”

Scroogequest doesn’t give a fiddler’s fart about who they burn out, and AI must be a dream come true for the hierarchy.

It never gets sick, never takes a holiday, never wants a pay rise and never needs a lunch hour.

And there’s always another bright-eyed wannabe waiting in the wings who’ll accept less dosh than the experienced hands and won’t dare pipe up about intolerable workloads.

The old guard has been thrown on the scrapheap like out-of-date computers.

Next to follow? Gen Z!