Denver Post Cuts 'Cannabist' Editorial Staff, Replaces Reporters With Bots, Former Weed Reviewer Says

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WEED FEED / John Ross Ferrara / Monday, April 30, 2018 @ 8:16 a.m.

Denver Post Cuts 'Cannabist' Editorial Staff, Replaces Reporters With Bots, Former Weed Reviewer Says

A screenshot of Browne’s Twitter feed.

The Denver Post, the first American newspaper to hire a marijuana editor, has cut the entire editorial staff of its online marijuana news site, The Cannabist, according to a former reporter.

Former Denver Post weed reviewer Jake Browne said in a 22-part Twitter rant on Friday that the paper made the cuts in favor of replacing reporters with “bots” — automated software robots that scrape the internet for information and package it as news.

“One of the great experiments in journalism is, for all intents and purposes, dead today,” Browne tweeted. “The Denver Post‘s marijuana vertical, The Cannabist, has cut all editorial staff and will replace them with bots. This is the story of stupid, stupid hedge funds.”

Forbes reports that the cuts are the latest development in the Denver Post staff’s struggle with its New York-based parent company Alden Global Capital, which purchased the paper in 2010.

“What made The Cannabist special was this was a journalistic approach to pot,” Browne tweeted. “The landscape had been dominated by advocacy from institutions like High Times, but we were telling both sides of the story. (No offense to HT and what they did for cannabis education).”

Browne went on to Tweet that the bots have not inundated the website at this point, saying that current Cannabist reporter Alicia Wallace will continue to write for the site until she leaves for an upcoming fellowship at Colombia University. Then the bots will “take over” he says.

“Here is the rare story of how they let an incredibly valuable asset slip through their hands and disintegrate before their own eyes,” he Tweeted. “They’d be lucky if they could get pennies on the dollar for it now. They were, in a word, stupid.”

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