Newcomers to Boston would likely be confused if they stumbled upon the online website North Boston News looking for information about what to do in the city.

The front page recently featured a jumble of stories with repeated themes and headlines. Several focused on where to find the cheapest gas in Essex County. Stories are written by “staff” or, in some cases, what appear to be fake bylines of reporters with no identifiable information or track records on the internet, unlike most working journalists.

North Boston News is one of a growing number of what journalist watchdogs are calling “pink slime” journalism. Named after a meat byproduct made from beef trimmings, these websites attempt to look like traditional local news organizations but instead are created and funded by partisan groups or hostile governments, largely with the help of automated services, according to watchdog groups that follow them.

In Massachusetts, such sites include websites with seemingly local names like the Bean Town Times, the Cape Cod Ledger and the Springfield Record.

Last year, a New York-based company called NewsGuard released a report finding that there were 1,265 “pink slime” outlets across the nation, more than the number of dwindling daily newspapers. And with the recent defunding of public radio and television by Congress, some are worried these sites will play a larger role in filling local news holes, especially in more remote areas across the country.

“It is as pernicious as any of the other contributing causes to this local news crisis because it undermines the legitimate hand-woven truths of local news organizations struggling to survive,” said Charlie Sennott, publisher of the Martha’s Vineyard Times and cofounder of Report for America, which assigns reporters to local newsrooms around the country.

Besides further eroding readership and trust from legitimate news outlets, there are larger civic implications of these “pink slime” outlets. Dan Kennedy, a professor of journalism at Northeastern University and co-author of a book called “What Works in Community News,” said these sites are currently limited in their reach. But he’s concerned that they could be “flipped” to engage in more hardcore political propaganda if they gain a wider audience, particularly during key elections.

Kennedy said one of his favorite examples of “pink slime” journalism is the North Boston News — because anyone familiar with Massachusetts knows there is no such place.

“You ever been to North Boston? They say it’s lovely this time of year,’’ he joked. “I mean whoever’s behind this isn’t even putting in the effort to establish true local identities. But the point is, these can be weaponized and used for political propaganda at some point.”

Who’s behind this?

The largest known player in this arena is Metric Media, the company that operates North Boston News and 58 other websites that claim to provide community news across New England. The company says on its homepage that it has more than 1,300 sites across the nation, with an aim of giving “every citizen a voice in their community.”

But Metric Media provides no contact information or names of leadership on its website. Nobody replied to GBH News’ emails requesting comment sent to the addresses listed on several of the 14 sites covering news in Massachusetts, including the North Boston News.

But several journalism researchers tie the company to Brian Timpone, a conservative former TV reporter. Timpone founded the now defunct company Journatic, which was criticized in 2012 for employing low-paid writers based in the Philippines to report on communities in the United States under fake bylines.

Emily Bell, founding director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism, says Timpone is the central figure in a network of “shell companies” and related nonprofits that fund Metric Media’s “pay for play” local news. The editorial content published on Metric Media sites over the years includes the false assertion that the 2020 election was stolen, according to a report by the Duke Sanford School of Public Policy.

“Metric Media is constructed very, very deliberately so that it is hard to know where the money is coming from and going to,’’ Bell told GBH News last week. “You really do have to spend a lot of time digging into (federal) filings to see who’s been giving money where.”

Timpone could not be reached for comment. But in an interview on a 2012 segment for “This American Life,” he said he believed his approach to news gathering would help “save” journalism. “If you looked at the content we produce, in most cases, you wouldn’t even notice it’s from a reporter who lives somewhere else, who is writing the same story. It’s just done more efficiently.”

The North Boston News website explains that Metric Media was created to “fill the void in community news” following years of declining local newspapers.

“Our approach is to provide objective, data-driven information without political bias. We provide 100% original reporting, including to share as much data as possible from government and other publicly available sources. We also provide a platform for all citizens whose views on issues are rarely heard. If you want a voice in your community, we want to hear from you.”

Eroding trust, competing for readers

On Martha’s Vineyard, The Times competes with the Vineyard Gazette for readership, and, to a lesser degree, the slimmed down Cape Cod Times, now owned by Gannett. But Sennott says in this competitive environment they are also vying for readers’ attention against the Cape Cod Ledger, considered by many to be an example of “pink slime.” Similar to the North Boston News and part of the same network of sites, the Ledger last week included a bundle of stories about gas prices and school enrollment data.

“They’re not competitors in the sense of we’re competing with them for eyeballs about news on Martha’s Vineyard. But where we are competing with them is for how people understand what it means to read a news report,’’ Sennott said. “People confuse this completely false, synthetic content that really doesn’t have any reporters on the ground.”

While several local and regional editorial leaders told GBH News they are responding to an avalanche of AI-generated stories with more robust on-the-ground reporting, they find that their hard work frequently ends up on the websites of questionable news organizations.

“We’ve seen several sites that scrape our content, and content from other Vermont outlets, without permission. It’s not clear who owns or runs those sites, so there’s no one to complain to. It’s very difficult to get them taken offline,’’ said Cathy Resmer, deputy publisher of Seven Days, a free weekly newspaper published in Vermont. “It’s infuriating — they’re stealing our content and there’s seemingly no way to stop them.”

Bill Forry, longtime publisher of the Dorchester Reporter, says outright lifting of content from his paper has become more common as faux online news sites proliferate.

“It’s incumbent on us as publishers to be vigilant about challenging that misuse of our content because that in itself can confuse and or just illegitimize our work when it’s not presented properly, without permission,’’ he said. “From a publisher’s perspective, it’s added a lot of extra hours to the week. I’ll put it that way.”

There are still clues as to which stories are written by trustworthy reporters, if you know where to look. For example, North Boston News includes bylines of writers with names like N.C. Dean and U.C. Blocker.

Kelly McBride, chair of the Craig Newmark Center for Ethics and Leadership at the Poynter Institute in Florida, says these bylines are likely fake — but not illegal.

The tradition of displaying the names and, sometimes, faces of reporters are used by traditional media to instill trust, she said. Using fake bylines is an indication to the audience that “this publication doesn’t value you as a news consumer,” she said.

“A fake byline is definitely covered by the First Amendment. It’s legal,’’ she said. “Is it ethical? No. It’s very hard to create any level of trust and accountability or transparency if the bylines on the stories that you’re creating are not real people.”

Newspaper editors say it takes time to build trust. And while some of the state’s more established news sources already have relationships and credibility, it may be harder for newer nonprofits trying to distinguish themselves amidst the online flood of AI-generated news.

Sam Mintz is the editor of Brookline News, a hyper-local nonprofit news organization that launched in 2023. He says his organization has three employees and he works from his home in West Roxbury.

He told GBH News he worries that websites like the North Boston News will add to people’s confusion and skepticism about what online content is real and what isn’t.

“I spend a lot of time explaining to people, we do reporting, it’s then edited, we fact check, all of our work is done by humans,” Mintz said. “I find it very worrying that it’s so much easier and so much more common for that kind of stuff to start popping up in people’s feeds.”

And as the content becomes more ubiquitous, there’s also concern that with the help of ChatGPT and other AI technology, contents of “pink slime” websites will be algorithmically combined with traditional news sites, becoming part of an artificially generated summaries.

‘Real world damage’

But beyond the effects on trust and the larger media landscape, Kennedy said “pink slime” sites can “cause real world damage.” He points to a widely publicized murder in New Jersey that initially confounded police, because it never happened.

“They started looking into it and they found that there had been no murder at all and that this had been essentially hallucinated by the AI engine used by this local 'pink slime’ news site,” Kennedy said.

Some organizations, like Newsguard, are making efforts to better educate people about which webpages can be trusted. The information watchdog offers an online tool that helps readers determine the credibility of certain sites. The app displays website trust ratings and scores next to links on search results and social media feed pages.

When you search for North Boston News on Newsguard’s tool, it comes with this warning label: “Proceed with Maximum Caution: This website is unreliable because it severely violates basic journalistic standards.”

McKenzie Sadeghi, director of intelligence products at Newsguard, says news consumers “now have a significant amount of responsibility that they didn’t used to have in an old system where media was generally considered to be trustworthy.”

And in a time where media outlets across the country are fighting financial, political and societal headwinds, there’s a risk these outlets will cause lasting damage.

Ron Mitchell is the publisher of the Bay State Banner, New England’s largest and oldest newspaper written primarily for Black communities. While the Bay State Banner has been publishing since 1965, he worries consumers will be confused by AI-generated reporting from Metric Media’s similar sounding “Bay State News.” And beyond just his publication’s bottom line, this will further dilute the public’s trust in real journalism.

“We all should remember, without an educated electorate, democracy will not function properly,’’ Mitchell said. “Unfortunately. I am afraid we may already be seeing the results of the use of propaganda and misinformation in media and the negative effects it is having on democracy, even now.”

Nicole Dauphinee is an international correspondent who has reported from the Russian Federation, Norway and Ireland. She launched this story while completing degrees in journalism and international security at Harvard Extension School.

Thoughts or comments? Write to us at investigations@wgbh.org.