A recent syndicated special section in the Chicago Sun-Times included an article about cooking “delicious meals that don’t require turning on the oven.” The article’s author quoted acclaimed chef Alice Waters on oven-free cooking “as the ideal way to showcase peak-season ingredients,” citing her interview with Food & Wine magazine.
Waters was indeed interviewed by Food & Wine in 2023, as cited in the section titled “Heat Index: Your Guide to the Best of Summer” — but she didn’t say anything in that interview like what the special section quoted her as having said. Waters’ executive assistant said the chef didn’t provide that quote and wasn’t interviewed for the section.
The Sun-Times received widespread criticism last week for publishing the section — which was produced by a third party, King Features — on May 18, after it was found to include recommendations to read books that didn’t even exist.
A review by the Sun-Times newsroom of the 64-page special section found the errors extended far beyond the mostly fake summer reading list, with more misinformation plaguing other articles in the edition. The newsroom fact-checked all 10 stories with named sources and each of the articles had multiple errors and information that couldn’t be independently verified. Some included phony sources and quotes.
In addition, the Sun-Times review raised questions about an article in another King-produced holiday guide that ran in the Sun-Times in November. The newsroom could not confirm the existence of a woman quoted in the story. Chicago Public Media, which owns the Sun-Times, said Thursday it would remove the guide from its e-paper archives, just as it took down the “Heat Index.”
The author of the content, Chicago-based freelance writer Marco Buscaglia, has blamed the erroneous information, including the book reviews, on his use of artificial intelligence and on what he said was his failure to fact-check what the AI program generated.
Buscaglia declined Wednesday to comment specifically on the numerous problems the Sun-Times found in the “Heat Index,” which also was published by the Philadelphia Inquirer.
The Sun-Times editorial staff had no role in the production of the section, which the newspaper and the Inquirer had bought from the New York-based King, a division of Hearst Corp.
Executives for CPM said they plan to no longer buy special editorial sections from King, though they will continue to rely on the third-party syndicated content provider for comics and puzzles, as the newspaper has done for decades.
In an online article Thursday about the debacle, CPM CEO Melissa Bell detailed what she described as a series of “human mistakes” by Buscaglia, King, the Sun-Times and CPM. It began, Bell wrote, with Buscaglia’s use of AI and a failure to check what it had generated.
“King Features is conducting its own internal review, so it’s uncertain what broke down internally for them, but it’s likely that the team did not conduct a thorough fact-checking or copy editing process before sending Buscaglia’s work out to partners across the country,” Bell said.
Hearst did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Bell said the Sun-Times circulation department worked with King and expected the section would “live up to a level of editorial rigor that matches the standards of Chicago Public Media.” The section was not submitted to Sun-Times journalists for review, and it was published without disclosing that King had produced it.
“Instead, they packaged it under a Sun-Times banner and sent it to homes across the region,” Bell said of the section, which was inserted between news pages filled primarily with staff-produced stories.
For the past two years, the Sun-Times has given home delivery print readers about 10 such special sections a year, charging an extra $3 for each.
Sun-Times staff initially wrote the stories that went into the sections, which were intended to stem falling newspaper revenue.
But Bell noted that producing premium special sections was time-consuming for Sun-Times staff, who also needed to handle daily responsibilities. Although the newsroom still produces some sections, the total number that are staff-written has been “scaled back,” she said.
Bell said the decision to buy special sections from King Features — which predated her arrival at CPM last year — was a “creative solution to keep hitting revenue goals while we transition from print to digital revenue.” She said she had no objection: “I didn’t deeply investigate the editions, and quickly approved the team to continue the practice in place. My reasoning: let’s not sacrifice any revenue.”
In an April email to potential customers, King Features had touted “Heat Index” as “content-rich” and a “premium summer lifestyle section designed to entertain, inspire, and energize your readers through the season’s best experiences.”
“It’s the ultimate seasonal companion — crafted to boost engagement and deliver revenue opportunities across categories,” the email boasted.
Buscaglia, a former suburban newspaper journalist, has said he wrote practically the entire issue as a side job and had worked for King for about three years on similar assignments.
One of the first stories in the summer section, touted as “a look at the hammock boom,” quoted several people who may not exist, or at least are not who Buscaglia said they were.
For example, a Ryan Leidecker was described as a product line manager at Eagles Nest Outfitters. The company said Leidecker is not an employee nor ever has been.
Buscaglia also cited a Dr. Jennifer Campos as professor of leisure studies at the University of Colorado. The university says it has no record of an employee named Jennifer Campos.
The story quoted Campos as saying a “hammock has become this generation’s equivalent of the Frisbee on the quad,” from her “2023 research paper published in the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography.” A search of her name in the journal yielded nothing.
In the same story, Mark Ellison is identified as an employee at Great Smoky Mountains National Park and warns about the damage that “improper hammock hanging techniques” can do to trees, with Buscaglia noting the information appeared on the park’s website.
Ellison posted on Facebook that he was not an employee of the park and said no such thing. The national park confirmed to the Sun-Times that Ellison does not work there and that there is no such information about hammocks on its website.
There were multiple examples of misinformation in another story by Buscaglia about do-it-yourself backyard upgrades. DIY blogger Beau Coffron was cited as an authority on building pergolas with “proper post anchoring.”
Coffron told the Sun-Times, “I never said that. I actually know nothing about installing pergolas. If you need a quote about family friendly foods, I’m your guy. For construction? Not so much.”
A gardening author was quoted as speaking at a 2024 flower and garden festival. Festival organizers said she was not a speaker — and the author had died in 2023.
Also cited in the DIY article was a 2024 Wired magazine story by a tech writer named Brian Kahn, about setting up an outdoor movie area in your backyard. Wired told the Sun-Times that Kahn has not written for the publication and the quote was inaccurate.
And the section’s “Summer reading list for 2025,” on page 62, recommended 15 book titles with reviews, though 10 of the titles were fake while the authors were real.
The authors, or their representatives, confirmed to the Sun-Times that the titles were made up. Taylor Jenkins Reid’s publicist said the author’s upcoming book is “Atmosphere,” not “The Collector’s Piece,” mentioned in the article. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Percival Everett said in an email, “This is my fake AI response,” and proceeded to confirm that “The Rainmakers, a novel about people who make rain, has not been written…” Well-known Chicago author Rebecca Makkai, who was wrongly listed as the author of the non-existent “Boiling Point, last week created her own reading list, posting on Instagram that it was “Fifteen REAL books you should ACTUALLY read this summer. Written by humans!”
After initially giving a number of interviews about using AI for the book recommendations, Buscaglia told the Sun-Times this week that he didn’t want to detail the process that led to the misinformation in the stories he wrote and declined to respond to the paper’s findings.
“I don’t need to go story by story,” he wrote in an email. “I’m not sure what else was found but again, I’ll take responsibility and again, will blame my AI naivety and lack of oversight.”
In a statement last week, King said Buscaglia violated a strict policy against using AI and that the company terminated its working relationship with the writer. But Buscaglia said this week he reviewed his contracts with King and found no AI policy.
Bell said the “Heat Index” fiasco would not end CPM’s exploration of the possibilities for AI in journalism.
“First, Chicago Public Media will not back away from experimenting and learning how to properly use AI,” Bell wrote. “We will not be using AI agents to write our stories, but we will work to find ways to use AI technologies to help our work and serve our audiences.”
She said a policy for using AI was being drafted and would be posted publicly “for our community to weigh in.”
This story was reported, written and edited by members of the Chicago Public Media editorial staff. Under CPM’s protocol, no CPM corporate official or executive leader external to the newsroom reviewed this story before it was posted publicly.