Pink-slime journalism

Pink-slime journalism is a practice in which news outlets, or fake partisan operations masquerading as such, publish (often but not always) lower-quality news reports that appear to be independent local news outlets. The use of these websites to gather user data has also been observed. The reports are either computer-generated or written by poorly-paid outsourced writers, sometimes using pen names.

The term "pink-slime journalism" was coined by journalist Ryan Smith in 2012. A related term, "news mirage", was coined in 2024 by journalists Miranda Green and David Folkenflik to refer to websites that "look like news, but in truth [serve as] mouthpieces" for corporations or advocacy groups with a non-journalistic agenda.

The name "pink slime journalism" is a reference to "pink slime", a meat by-product that is used as filler in processed meats, which are sometimes passed off as higher-quality meat in fast food restaurants.

Defining characteristics of pink slime journalism, according to Poynter, include:

Additionally, some websites (which have been referred to as "news mirages") produce relatively high-quality work, but obscure the non-journalistic agenda of their publisher, which might be an advocacy group or self-interested corporation.

Pink-slime journalism typically involves outsourcing local news stories to low-wage employees, or using computer automation or AI to generate news stories from various datasets. Pink-slime websites can often be identified by their heavy use of automatically generated or templated content and lack of original reporting.

In 2012 writers employed by a pink-slime network were being paid between $0.35 and $24 per article; the New York Times reported in October 2020 that journalists were being paid between $3 and $36 per article.

The design and naming of pink-slime news publications often resemble that of independent local news outlets.