It can't. And the notion that it will be able to "in five years" is completely without any basis. It's possible, I suppose, but anyone who claims this with great certainty is not a serious person.
The "slop" is just a reflection of this bottom feeding attempt to get some tiny bit of ad revenue. Using an LLM or a "pay per article" contracting fleet looks very similar.
Most local publications don't pay many if any full time journalists either way. I struggle to find great journalism on any local level around me - and discovery is difficult when anything reasonably good is usually a substack behind a paywall. But even then, they aren't pushing on local issues in person. None are going to the Mayor's press conference and directly asking them questions.
I'm imagining Atlas running around city hall with a little reporter hat on.