{"id":85,"date":"2011-09-21T17:13:03","date_gmt":"2011-09-21T22:13:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jdunn.journalism.cuny.edu\/?p=85"},"modified":"2011-09-21T17:13:03","modified_gmt":"2011-09-21T22:13:03","slug":"is-there-a-place-for-robot-written-journalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/articles.juliandunn.net\/?p=85","title":{"rendered":"Is there a place for robot-written journalism?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last week, the New York Times <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/09\/11\/business\/computer-generated-articles-are-gaining-traction.html\">reported<\/a> that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.narrativescience.com\/\">Narrative Science<\/a>, a Chicago-based startup, had developed software that would automatically digest sports data and generate a <a href=\"http:\/\/btn.com\/2011\/09\/01\/first-quarter-wisconsin-20-unlv-0\/\">news brief<\/a>. The software will also create articles out of other material such as a company&#8217;s financial reports and housing statistics.\u00a0Ironically, the software was developed\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cjr.org\/behind_the_news\/the_future_of_journalism.php\">in collaboration with the Medill School of Journalism<\/a> at Northwestern University.<\/p>\n<p>Narrative Science isn&#8217;t the only company in this space. <a href=\"http:\/\/automatedinsights.com\/\">Automated Insights<\/a> (a company that <a href=\"http:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2011\/09\/12\/statsheet-changes-name-to-automated-insights-lands-4-million\/\">recently scored $4 million in additional financing and changed its name from StatSheet<\/a> &#8212; could it be because they wanted to use &#8220;AI&#8221; as their company logo?) has also developed technology that creates &#8220;long &amp; short form articles, headlines &amp; summaries written entirely by software, that derive insight from data.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s clear that software like this works best for data-heavy content. And in the aforementioned <acronym>CJR<\/acronym> interview, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cjr.org\/behind_the_news\/the_future_of_journalism.php?page=all\">the founder states<\/a> that special algorithms for style and tone had to be created; something feasible for data-driven sports and business articles with a consistent tone, but perhaps not that easy for news articles. On Twitter, one user commented that automated content does not equal understanding:<\/p>\n<p>[blackbirdpie url=&#8221;http:\/\/twitter.com\/#!\/LawrenceHecht\/statuses\/116228585798369280&#8243;]<\/p>\n<p>Software like this could also be used for mischief. For example, web content farms like <a href=\"http:\/\/ehow.com\/\">eHow<\/a> could quickly increase the amount of &#8220;content&#8221; that&#8217;s hosted on their sites, solely for the purpose of selling more ads (something they&#8217;ve been <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/2011\/04\/21\/135514220\/webs-content-farms-grow-audiences-for-ads\">criticized for<\/a> previously).<\/p>\n<p>What do you think? Do you think robot-written journalism has a place in the newsroom?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week, the New York Times reported that Narrative Science, a Chicago-based startup, had developed software that would automatically digest sports data and generate a news brief. The software will also create articles out of other material such as a company&#8217;s financial reports and housing statistics.\u00a0Ironically, the software was developed\u00a0in collaboration with the Medill School &hellip;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/articles.juliandunn.net\/?p=85\" class=\"more-link\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[8,19,20,27,29],"class_list":["post-85","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interactive","tag-automation","tag-journalism-2","tag-narrative-science","tag-robots","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/articles.juliandunn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/articles.juliandunn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/articles.juliandunn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/articles.juliandunn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/articles.juliandunn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=85"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/articles.juliandunn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/articles.juliandunn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=85"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/articles.juliandunn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=85"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/articles.juliandunn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=85"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}