A report published by the Columbia Journalism Review finds an explosion of “pink slime” news sites, especially in battleground states ahead of the November election. “Pink slime” is the name given to these low-cost, automated news sites that are built to look like other credible news sites, but are owned, funded or operated by political-interest groups or “dark money” networks. We showed these sites to a few people in Houston’s Hermann Park, and after a few minutes of comparing them to legitimate news sites, they were able to identify which one was not local.