Journalism is dead. That’s why I’m building a new one.
By Alan Jacobson | RevenueModel.ai
AI has now been implicated in multiple deaths.
Amazon is laying off 15,000 people.
Microsoft is laying off 14,000.
And yet the tech press seems determined not to connect the dots.
Over the past week, I reached out to 83 journalists across The New York Times, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Axios, Reuters, Bloomberg, CNBC, TechCrunch, NPR, and other major outlets. I shared reporting about AI-linked teen suicides, wrongful-death lawsuits, hallucination risks, mispricing of AI-related tech stocks, regulatory compliance failures under FTC/HIPAA/COPPA, and the 13 AI-governance patents I currently have pending before the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
I sent everything a responsible journalist would need to evaluate whether a major story was unfolding.
I received two replies.
From Yahoo Finance: “I'm not interested in these messages.”
From a longtime tech reporter: “Explain yourself clearly and maybe someone will listen. Otherwise, you're a crank on the internet.”
That reaction is revealing.
It tells us less about me and more about the condition of the press.
So here is what those 83 journalists didn’t read, didn’t investigate, and didn’t report.
The evidence exists online right now
More than one hundred posts — reporting, analysis, data, filings, graphics and primary documents — exist publicly.
They cover:
- AI hallucinations
- regulatory failures
- revenue-model deficiencies
- privacy gaps
- lack of persistent memory
- context-window limits
- mispricing across AI-exposed equities
- and the legal and technical architecture needed to fix all of it
None of this is theoretical. There are published stories, data sets, screenshots, timelines, and receipts.
The patents are real
Thirteen provisional filings exist. Each includes the required components: SB16, abstract, drawings, specification, background and detailed description.
Anyone familiar with the patent process knows that this is not trivial work. It requires rigor, structure, domain knowledge and a specific understanding of how the USPTO evaluates claims.
The legal engagement is real
I am working with one of the largest technology-focused law firms in the world — a firm that performs its own due diligence before taking on a client.
They do not entertain fantasy.
They do not humor cranks.
They process IP that becomes the backbone of billion-dollar industries.
And my track record is real
Across 47 years, I have:
- operated my own company for more than three decades
- redesigned newspapers on five continents
- directly increased readership and revenue
- overseen IT operations across legacy newsroom systems
- produced, written, and directed national television spots
- published photography that appeared on the front pages of the New York Times and Washington Post and Saturday Night Live two weeks in a row.
- and built a news-education platform with three million registered users — a business acquired by part of the U.S. Government – the first such acquisition of any business of any kind in its 179-year history.
These aren’t claims.
They are documented facts.
Yet 83 journalists — many early in their careers, many dependent on platforms optimized for speed rather than accuracy — dismissed all of it without a single follow-up question.
That dismissal is not personal.
It is structural.
We’ve been here before
In 2006, the iPhone did not exist. Facebook was burning cash.
Newsroom jobs were plentiful — 74,410 journalists, according to Bill Kovarik’s “Revolutions in Communication,” along with Columbia Journalism Review, Pew, the Local News Initiative, the Medill School, Nieman Lab, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and other sources.
That same year, I published a warning — and a ten-point survival plan — arguing that newspapers were headed toward collapse.
I was mocked and ignored.
But the collapse came anyway.
Of the 74,410 journalists working in 2006, nearly all have since been displaced.
The institutions didn’t listen.
The individuals didn’t listen.
But the market did.
The same failure pattern is repeating with AI — only faster, and at far higher stakes.
The largest technology story since the birth of the web is unfolding:
AI-linked suicides, lawsuits, mispriced equities, regulatory exposure, unstable architectures and governance failures.
The data is visible in the open.
The filings exist.
The evidence is verifiable.
The risks are rising.
And the press — once again — is asleep.
Which leads to the only question that matters: What did they know, and when did they know it?
They knew AI was harming people.
They knew regulators were behind.
They knew hallucinations were escalating risk.
They knew the valuation models were wrong.
And they were informed — explicitly — on November 23, 2025.
Still, nothing.
The public deserves better.
The stakes demand better.
The next generation deserves better.
If you work in journalism, you may find what follows uncomfortable. Accountability often is.
Facts don’t bend.
Data doesn’t care about feelings.
And truth matters now more than at any point since the early days of the web in the 1990s.
The press isn’t covering this story. So I did. Here, here and here.
Reporters contacted two weeks ago via email, LinkedIn and Twitter:
Kara Swisher, self-described irritant; Aaron Ross Sorkin, The New York Times; Kashmir Hill, The New York Times; Mike Isaac, The New York Times; Kevin Roose, The New York Times; David Folkenflik, NPR; Diane Rehm, WAMU; Ina Fried, Axios; Sanford Cannold, CNBC; Lacy O’Toole, CNBC; Stephanie Landsman, CNBC; Louise Connelly, Versant Media; Scott Zamost, CNBC; Erin Hiner-Gee, CNBC; Jeff McCracken, CNBC; Teddy Farkas, CNBC; Yun Li, CNBC; Keris Alison Lahiff, CNBC; Eamon Javers, CNBC; Jodi Gralnick, CNBC; Kevin Flynn, CNBC; David Spiegel, CNBC; Elizabeth Cordova, CNBC; Deirdre Bosa, CNBC; Kate Rooney, CNBC; Steve Kovach, CNBC; Julia Boorstin, CNBC; Elaine Moore, Financial Times; Christian Berthelsen, Financial Times; Ethan Plotkin, Financial Times; Melissa Heikkila, Financial Times; Cristina Criddle, Financial Times; Murad Ahmed, Financial Times; Rafe Rosner-Uddin, Financial Times; Chris Gathercole, Financial Times; Hannah Murphy, Financial Times; Parmy Olson, Bloomberg; Sam Schechner, WSJ; Asa Fitch, WSJ; Reed Albergotti, Semafor; Krystal Hu, Reuters; Daniel Burrus; Andrew Browne, Semafor; Sarah Krouse, WSJ; Jessica Lessin, The Information; Eduardo Kaplan, WSJ; James Graff, WP; Cara Lombardo, WSJ; Rachel Metz, Bloomberg; Natasha Mascarenhas, TechCrunch, Alex Wilhelm; Frederic Lardinois, TechCrunch, Mary Ann Azevedo; Haje Jan Kamps; Brian Heater; Ron Miller; Anthony Ha; Sean O’Kane, TechCrunch; Dominic‑Madori Davis, TechCrunch; TechCrunch; Lauren Forristal, TechCrunch; Jeff Beer, Fast Company; Ainsley Harris, Fast Company; Jay Woodruff, Fast Company; Yasmin Gagne, Fast Company; Harry McCracken, Fast Company; Katharine Schwab, Forbes; Cale Guthrie Weissman, The Real Deal; Andy Greenberg, WIRED; Kate Knibbs; Steven Levy, WIRED; Will Knight, WIRED; Paresh Dave; Boone Ashworth, WIRED; Gideon Lichfield; Jeremy Kahn, Fortune; Rey Mashayekhi, MarketWatch; Anne Sraders, Financial Times; Jessica Mathews, Fortune; Michal Lev-Ram; Nick Statt; Sheryl Estrada, Fortune; Lila MacLellan, WSJ; Paolo Confino, Dow Jones