A South Shore AI-generated news site put up a paywall. Hundreds of readers, including a police chief, opened their wallets.

The digital site South Shore News faced a significant test when founder Justin Evans put up a paywall in April: Would readers pay for artificial intelligence-generated articlesthat recap town government and school committee meetings?

Read more In Taylor Swift’s beach town, every clue becomes a wedding rumor

As it turns out, the answer is yes. So far, Evans has 350 paid subscribers, many of whom are deeply invested in town politics and want to learn more about how neighboring townsfrom Weymouth down to Plymouth are tackling common issues. While the audience is still small, it’s a sign that despite skepticism about the technology, there could be a larger audience for AI-generated local news — albeit with a limited focus.

The site has become a significant side hustle for Evans; he expects to generate $25,000 in revenue this year against less than $2,000 in costs, not counting his own time running the site — enough for him to think about expansion.

“It felt like a real make or break moment for me. I decided this is either going to be something or it’s not,” Evans, 36, said. “The reception has been enough for me to keep going.”

Communities on the South Shore have been starved for news about local happenings as legacy outlets have cut back on all but the biggest stories. South Shore News can’t replace everything that’s been lost: readers won’t find interviews with students at a high school science fair or a visit to a nursing home to note a 100th birthday. Instead, nearly all of the coverage originates from AI transcriptions of public meetings broadcast on websites.

Evans acknowledges that it has made some mistakes a well-sourced human could probably avoid (it struggles to understand locals’ accents at times, for instance).

“It is concerning that it is replacing the beat reporters to some extent,” said William Quigley, the police chief in Cohasset who purchased a South Shore News group subscription he shares withfellow officers and government offices that include the town manager.“But, unfortunately, we’re not riding horses to calls anymore. Things change and you have to adapt, I suppose,” Quigley added.

Evans, who has served on the Whitman Select Board since 2019, started South Shore News in 2024 after being frustrated with the lack of reporting on town government in the region. The site covers 19 towns south of Boston. Subscriptions start at$8 a month or $80 for a yearly plan, and over 3,000 additional free subscribers to the site get previews of each article.

South Shore News uses Substack to publish its articles. For transcribing public meetings that are posted on YouTube, Evans will use Google’s AI tool Gemini to transcribe videos. He uses an OpenAI-based tool for any public access videos that are posted elsewhere.

For the written articles, Evans said he found Claude to be the best large language model for first drafts of stories. After that’s done, he’ll use another model to edit the article. He also has set up an AI-generated summary of what’s happening in the region to be sent to his inbox each morning to get a sense of what’s happening across the South Shore.

Some articles will be town specific, while others will synthesize common issues across multiple towns. Evans will often start with a summary of the most important takeaways. Within the article, Evans will bold key names or figures, add subheadings, and include linked timestamps that allow readers to view the specific part of the meeting that is being referenced.

“I check YouTube every day, I check the community sites at least a couple times a week for the non-YouTube videos,” Evans said. “I’ve published 1,900 stories on South Shore News in 2½ years.”

Recent stories include coverage of the Plymouth County Commission seeking to rent a property for additional revenue, Hingham residents lodging complaints to the select board about an MBTA bus route in their neighborhood, and a roundup of local high school commencement speeches.

While many readers said they were initially wary of whether the AI-generated outlet could reliably document the latest school budget crises or votes to override property taxes, they’re largely willing to accept the mistakes in place of watching marathon local meetings on YouTube. Several said that early on, there were frequent errors, but that the stories have recently been more accurate.

Read more Shane van Gisbergen captures the pole for inaugural NASCAR race at Naval Base Coronado

Some lamented the erosion of local newspapers that previously would have spearheaded town coverage, and said South Shore News was the best way to stay updated.

“I’m a baby boomer, and newspapers were always the way to go,” said Mary Waldron, a paid subscriber who lives in Brockton but serves as executive director of Old Colony Planning Council, which serves many South Shore towns. “But that weekly notice wasn’t keeping us informed necessarily instantaneously.”

Dan Kennedy, a Northeastern University journalism professor who researches local news, said that in terms of reach alone, there’s no other outlet on the South Shore that is comparable. But he worries the embrace of an almost entirely AI-generated news site could have adverse effects on other local news outlets that are based on traditional reportage, such as the South Shore Times, as well as the potential to start new ones.

“One of the dangers that we see in the local news crisis is that you can have ventures like the South Shore News spring up based on AI and providing something that leads people to say that it’s better than nothing,” Kennedy said. “But at the same time, they could block the rise of human news outlets or harm the ones that are already there.”

He added that in addition to reporting the news, local news outlets also help build community and connect people.

“It’s a spark for civic engagement,” Kennedy said. “That’s something AI can’t do anything at all.”

Even some subscribers said that they felt the site wasn’t doing quite the same work as a news outlet, but that it remains a helpful resource.

“I don’t think AI is journalism,” said Candace Kniffen, a South Shore News subscriber who is retired and lives in Halifax. “It’s like listening to a summary recording to me, and that’s better than nothing.”

Evans is also up front about the limitations of the service. He said he’s had people reach out asking if they could publish opinion pieces or have him dig into an investigative story, but he’s turned them down.

“I’m not trying to look for scoops here,” he said, “I’m trying to provide a public service of, ‘This stuff is going on in your town, here’s a place where you can find out about it.’ ”

While the profits aren’t enough for Evans to leave his full-time job working for the state’s Department of Public Utilities, he has his sights set on hiring a part-time editor if he can increase revenue to about $30,000 to $35,000 on an annual basis. Beyond adding staff, he is also looking at expanding regions or even starting a print paper in order to get access to legal notices, which many towns still require to be published in print.

“I think there’s an opportunity there to roll out a print paper, which may seem kind of backwards for an AI-driven news service,” Evans said.

Read more Isiah Kiner-Falefa heads to injured list as Red Sox lose a hot bat