"I inadvertently ended up with a paraphrased version of Shambaugh’s words rather than his actual words,” Edwards continued. He emphasized that the “text of the article was human-written by us, and this incident was isolated and is not representative of Ars‘ editorial standards."

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A reporter whose bailiwick is AI should have known that he needed to check any quotes an LLM spat out. The editorial staff should have been checking too, and this absolutely is representative of their standards if they weren't.

It would probably be worth checking to see if any other articles or employees have similarly disappeared.

Editorial staff?

There was such a thing, in newspapers up until 2000. Then, as profits nosedived, these sorts of things largely disappeared.

Purely online entities have no way to pay for real editorial staff.

News has no money, compared to news of old. It's part of the reason 99% of modern news is just reporting other people's tweets or whatever.

I can't imagine many news companies having much money for court battles (to force disclosure of documents, or force declassification, or fighting to protect sources). Or spending months or years investigating a story.

Our news sources are poor, weak now.

Yes: in newsrooms, this is the editor's responsibility. I note the editor wasn't fired.