Columbia Journalism Review · October 15, 2026 · On the brief until October 29, 2026

An AI Company Wanted to Buy My Reporting Notes

JournalismIntellectual Property LawMedia Studies

THE AI ANGLE

Ingesting unpublished reporting notes and drafts for model training

An AI data company offered to buy a freelance journalist's reporting notes, interview transcripts, and editorial drafts to train language models. The contract offered one thousand dollars for perpetual, sublicensable rights to these working materials. This procurement tactic pushes AI training data collection beyond published articles into the unpublished, private stages of professional reporting.

Summary written by AI Business Lens with an AI model from the article at cjr.org. It is not the article, and the publisher has not reviewed it. For publishers.

THE TEACHING ANGLE

Freelancers must weigh their legal right to sell their own notes against the ethical obligation to protect the trust of interviewed sources.

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An AI Company Wanted to Buy My Reporting Notes

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