The Thread

Each issue was an exhibit in a digital museum of ordinary lives. AI grouped 100 to 200 obituaries a week by theme, and Ethan turned the patterns into exhibits about how people live and what they leave behind.

Series followed one theme across several issues, including Black History Month, digital afterlives, and education. The last six issues, on people who loved their work, won a Communicator Award.

• Finding patterns

  AIGrouped each week’s obituaries by theme and flagged patterns across them.

  EthanDecided what the patterns meant and whose stories to tell.

• Writing

  AIHelped shape structure and ideas. It never wrote an exhibit on its own.

  EthanWrote and edited every exhibit.

• Checking

  AINever replaced verification.

  EthanChecked every detail against the original obituary, and each issue linked to it.

• Images

  AIMade the illustrations, never an image of a person who died.

  EthanLeft real photos in the original obituaries, one link away.

• The narrator

  AIEcho Weaver, the museum’s narrator, is an AI character.

  EthanSaid so on the site, and answered readers’ questions in a public guide to how the newsletter works.

Ethan’s case study on what The Thread tested and what came back is on his own site.

A year of issues, a tested way to use AI without handing it the writing, and a 54% average open rate. It can become a book, a series, or the same method applied to another archive.