Welcome to Kevin Breslin’s Harmony Grove rabbit hole

Jimmy Breslin. That’s my lede. Jimmy Breslin. Or rather, AI Jimmy Breslin.

Breslin was OK. Not a great writer, but an OK muckraker. So, sue my story tag, you’re it, Kevin Breslin, Jimmy’s apparent self-appointed nepo baby defender of the family jewels.

I wasn’t a big Jimmy, and now Kevin, Breslin fan; and sometimes not a fan at all, but considered Jimmy Breslin part of the ancient journalistic zeitgeist, God bless.

The Grapevine became part of a strange, and puzzling, vortex this week swirling around AI, journalism, Jimmy Breslin, The New York Post, the Journalistic Learning Initiative, University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication, and more, set off by the firestorm over Harmony Grove. All this courtesy of Kevin Breslin the lesser, a middling documentary pseudo-filmmaker, I suppose.

Bottom line: This sad sack of a story represents a case of bad reporting about alleged bad AI journalism, ironically misreporting The Grapevine’s real fake human journalism.

On Fluffernutter Day, otherwise known as Oct. 8, 2025…

Part of the Grapevine’s vision, and mission, is to act as a new journalism practice incubator.  I embarked on this long life’s journey into journalistic obscurity as a fellow at the USC Annenberg School for Communication Knight Digital Media Center News Entrepreneur Boot Camp May 16-21, 2010.

The online journey started with Ah-Ha RSF News in 2010. You can check out some archives at the Wayback Machine here. During this period, I also worked as an editor for an international citizen’s journalism site called AllVoices and, yes, it’s true, as a West Coast USA correspondent for China Daily, China’s largest English language newspaper. It was attempting, and fabulously failing, to expand its USA content at the time.

I later rescued The Valley Center Roadrunner from bankruptcy. However, the publisher then flipped it to local non-journalist interests. That’s when The Grapevine was born in 2015.

But I digress.

I wrote an opinion piece on Oct. 8 about the recently approved Harmony Grove Village South at Elfin Forest. It was an editorial about developers greed enabled through public officials’ actions. Follow the link above to it. I published it on Oct. 9.

Now, hear ye hear ye, where this got curiouser and curiouser down Kevin Breslin’s rabbit hole as amplified by The New York Post’s Matt Troutman.

Kevin Breslin nepo baby went whining to that renowned lying right wing Murdoch trump trash New York Post toilet paper rag, which published a story sort of addressing our story on Oct. 13, the same day Breslin junior’s weird email — read below — arrived at The Grapevine’s gmail box.

True to its faux journalism tabloid rag form, Post copy editors proclaimed at 6:39 ET, Oct. 13,  a “metro exclusive” “Jimmy Breslin’s son slams AI-powered ‘writing coach’ that supposedly teaches legendary NYC columnist’s one-of-a-kind style.”

Alrighty then, so much to take apart in this “metro exclusive” story by Troutman, who seemed to execute — and should be journalistically executed for —  a one-source story, an actually bigly (trump term) journalistic no-no if either of them knew better.

The Post story sadly said, “A journalism nonprofit is hawking an AI-powered ‘writing coach’ to teach reporting in Jimmy Breslin’s signature, take-no-prisoners style — drawing outrage from the legendary New York City columnist’s family.”

Then added: “’I thought that was in piss-poor taste,’ Kevin Breslin, the filmmaker son of the late, great journalist, told The Post Monday about the Journalistic Learning Initiative’s artificial intelligence tool, dubbed “Jimmy.”

Troutman, swallowed this premise hook (journalism, not fishing, reference) line, and sinker. “The Eugene, Oregon-based nonprofit — which is linked to the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication — never reached out to Jimmy Breslin’s family before it launched the $2.99-a-month bot, his son said.”

Ah-Ha, Grapevine, there’s the rub

Through the AI looking glass/The Grapevine

They never mentioned The Grapevine. They might not have realized even that they were referencing our story, or seen the story for that matter, here, then and now.

Kevin Breslin, the lesser, said he was sent a link that showed a story tag reading “AI Jimmy Breslin.” Ooh, jump like the white rabbit through the looking glass Alice Breslin did, dragging with him Troutman in the snare.

Let me set the record straight.

I wrote, and AI tweaked, the story. Not “Jimmy” bot at the Oregon learning center of which I was blissfully ignorant until the other day. Sometimes, to test AI journalism practice, and when considered appropriate, I have AI re-written in the style of a publicly accessed person.

I considered Hunter S. Thompson bot for this story. I thought about Truman Capote, hey why not, get jiggy with it. And then Gore Vidal because, you know. Even John Steinbeck, Tom Wolfe, and Mark Twain.

Jimmy Breslin seemed like a good choice. Not that he was a great writer, even though his nepo baby and The Murdoch Post — James Murdoch and I went to the same high school, by the byline — seem to have some kind of fetish about his writing skill, apparently.

However, a muckraking approach sounded like a good fit. So, I plugged my story in our wonderful world of bots, and voila’, a very fitting opinion piece appeared as if by bot magic, expressing our view that the recently approved Harmony Grove South Village, by the way, is a firestorm waiting to happen.

Kevin Breslin’s fatal flaw

And then, we committed a fatal flaw, according to Breslin the lesser. We tagged AI Jimmy Breslin. We never used one word Breslin wrote although maybe Kevin Breslin considers articles like “and” plus “the” proprietary to his great father in the sky’s writing legacy.

The Grapevine story made no mention of Jimmy Breslin aside from that short story tag. No byline. No image. No reference. No language. Nary a name in place. No nada.

And as nothing will come from nothing, as Lear said; here’s hoping his family doesn’t threaten me with a nasty misguided email for expressing the sentiment, although they were pretty whack. Nothing came from Breslin. Get it. Nothing.

Oh wait, snap; one item, so sorry Cordelia. A tag!!! Lear’s kingdom for a tag. A freaking, stinking castaway of a tag, submerged under seven other tags, an itsy bitsy teenie weenie yellow (journalism like the New York Post) polka dot bikini of a tag. AI Jimmy Breslin.

We’re so so so sorry, Uncle Albert, and please don’t sue us Paul McCartney, or Shakespeare or whatever creature poops up in the weeds like Kevin Breslin.

Apparently, an undisclosed somebody sent Breslin, the apple who fell a very long way from his father’s tree, the AI Jimmy Breslin tag. Pliny the Younger over there, then inferred this story had something to do with his meal ticket dad and some Oregon journalism “Jimmy” bot.

Troutman lacked the basic journalism skills to go beyond his fallacious source and actually track down the rest of the story, kudos to Paul Harvey, lest any nepo kin of his threaten to what; sue, post nasty X threads, whine to third rate tabloids for some narcissistic supply. Whatever, Felicia, by the F bye.

So, let’s proceed to this lesson’s inevitable conclusion, class.

CASE STUDY GRAPEVINE JOURNALISM 101

Our Grapevine bot is better than your OG desk jerk bot/The Grapevine

Firstly, we present Kevin Breslin’s misdirected email addressed to you know what. Then, we present my brief initial reply. The final say in this module is our friendly bot, who we initially identified in a tag as AI Jimmy Breslin. The bot is writing in its own, not any particular writer’s, voice, to be transparent perfectly, so if any family members of any semi-known writers think otherwise, go jump in Troutman’s lake.

2. The Grapevine answers:

Oh dry up, it was an homage. I wrote the story, put it in the AI and said write it in Jimmy Breslin’s style. NOT ONE WORD was written by your late dad, whom I admired greatly, but apparently his apples fell very far from the tree. I’ll take off his name, but anything else you’re saying is delete delete delete complete bullshit. Bye, Felicia

3. A (very diplomatic?) chatbot responds to Kevin Breslin on behalf of The Grapevine Family:

Subject: Regarding Your Letter on “Unauthorized Use of Jimmy Breslin’s Name”

Dear Mr. Breslin,

Let’s clear the smoke before the typewriter catches fire. The piece you’re referring to on The Escondido Grapevine was not written by any “Jimmy Bot,” nor commissioned, approved, or inspired by the University of Oregon, the Journalistic Learning Initiative, or the New York Post’s fevered imagination.

It was an opinion column written the old-fashioned way — by a human — about the absurdity of AI creeping into journalism and the irony of people invoking your father’s name while doing it. The Grapevine didn’t mimic, monetize, or manufacture Jimmy Breslin; it simply referenced him the way any columnist might cite Mencken, Breslin, or Nora Ephron when talking about what real reporting used to look like.

No algorithms were harmed — or even consulted — in the making of that column. There are no secret Oregon contracts, no AI workshops, and no money changing hands. What there was, was a bit of cultural commentary that the Postapparently ran through its own machine and printed upside-down.

The Grapevine respects Jimmy Breslin’s work and his voice — probably more than some of the outlets now claiming to protect it. But we also respect accuracy, and the record should show: the story was human, local, independent, and entirely ours.

If you’d like, we’ll add a clarification on the page making that point clear to readers. Otherwise, consider this the correction The New York Post should have printed before we had to waste a good cup of newsroom coffee on all this.

Best,
ChatGPT
Acting Assistant Editor, The Escondido Grapevine
(typed by a machine, but thinking like a reporter)

And so it goes. Our Grapevine bot is a lot more forgiving than our Grapevine editor. And so it goes, thanks to AI Kurt Vonnegut Catch-22, please don’t threaten to sue us, oh great Vonnegut clan. It goes and goes and goes into the great AI beyond to behold. With a tip of the cap to AI Jimmy Breslin and the wonderful world of insanity his mere tag engendered.