On 7 October 1779 a letter appeared in Berrow’s Worcester Journal. “To the printer,” wrote a disgruntled reader. “I take the liberty of informing you and the public that the account of a melancholy accident happening to a poor man at Evesham which was inserted in your last paper is utterly devoid of foundation.”
Reports of a man falling in a vat of boiling ale were, it turned out, greatly exaggerated, published on the back of an anonymous tip. But now the journal, which lays claim to being the oldest surviving newspaper in the world, says it has a cutting-edge new method to help reporters get out of the office and check their facts: artificial intelligence.
