A coalition that owns nearly 400 local US newspapers has sued OpenAI and Microsoft. The publishers call AI training on their reporting a death knell for local journalism. It is the largest copyright case the local press has brought yet.
Local newspapers report the meetings no algorithm attends. The council vote, the school board row, the obituary, the new restaurant downtown. Now the people who own nearly 400 of those papers want a court to decide one thing. What is that reporting worth to an AI company?
On the evening of 24 June, a nationwide coalition of publishers sued OpenAI and Microsoft. The case landed in Manhattan federal court. The 55-page complaint is blunt. It says the two firms copied hundreds of thousands of articles to build ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot. They sought no permission and paid nothing.
The case was first detailed by Courthouse News. It is led by Richner Communications, a Long Island publisher. The publishers’ lawyer is Matthew Platkin, who served as New Jersey’s attorney general from 2022 to 2026. He now runs his own firm. The publishers bring three counts of copyright infringement. They want statutory damages, actual damages, a return of profits, and legal fees.
