In September, a new newsletter called “Daily Bentonville” hit my inbox.

I’m confident I did not sign up for the newsletter, but it did sound great.

It was described as a “community newsletter sharing current events” that aimed to “make local news more accessible, highlight extraordinary people in our community, and support local organizations.”

But then I started Googling.

Turns out the “testimonials” from local “readers” show up word-for-word on tons of other similar sites, like SpringfieldSunrise.com, ReadingMorningNews.com, DailyRexburg.com, DailyKalamazoo.com and more.

I unsubscribed after learning this and thought little about it until this week, when a trustworthy trade publication published an article about the AI-driven newsletter farm behind “Daily Bentonville.”

Turns out there’s a single man behind all of these newsletters.

According to the article, internet entrepreneur Matthew Henderson has set up AI to summarize articles and publish newsletters in 355 different communities from his homebase in New York City. Details about Henderson, his company, and how he produces the newsletters are hard to find.

He has a defense for the fake testimonials, although it’s a relatively unconvincing one:

“Henderson denied his newsletter testimonials are fabricated, instead calling the names ‘anonymized’ and the quotes ‘sanitized amalgamations of some of our favorite (and most common) testimonials.’”

Really? Sanitized amalgamations?

The reporter who wrote the article reached out to me for my thoughts, and I’m quoted in the piece.

As part of his questions, he asked me to compare what we do here at The Bentonville Bulletin to “Daily Bentonville.”

To me, it’s simple. There is no comparison.

While Daily Bentonville is using AI to aggregate other people’s work from a far off location, we’re showing up in person and producing original journalism.

And while Daily Bentonville’s operator is opaque about who (or what) produces it, we lay everything out for you here:

If you have questions about our work, please send them to [email protected]. 

A real person will respond.