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"If a writer never had to compose a fifty word earthquake report again—few would complain. Better to leave the short, dry, purely informational articles to the

"If a writer never had to compose a fifty word earthquake report again—few would complain. Better to leave the short, dry, purely informational articles to the bots." The logical extension of this software is to replace the phrase 'earthquake report'. "If a writer never had to compose a fifty word Presidential press brief again—few would complain." "If a writer never had to compose a fifty word news leak again—few would complain." "If a writer never had to compose a fifty word announcement of a declaration of war again—few would complain." Let the machine do the writing to expedite publishing, because the accuracy of the source is assumed before the information is even shared publicly, provided the source submits releases in a formulaic manner. This removes the agency of humans that might ask complicated questions (journalists) – so I don't believe it qualifies as news or journalism, at all. This just helps move the words of the source to the front page of a news agency. Why dress up the release as unique content at all? Just print the damn press release word for word and cite the source.

EdiX 13y ago
A lot of modern journalism is already like this, it's a middle man between a number of sources (news agencies, PR offices, politicians) to a public. What's worse is that usually the source wants the message spread as far and wide as possible, that's why journalism is having so many economic problems recently.
- seanccox 13y ago
  Agreed. The internet burst the bubble that news agencies possessed editorial integrity, and that has cost them business. This just helps online media transition faster in the direction of link bait bullshit. The only people who benefit from bot composition are the wealthy and powerful. I am glad the LA Times has disclosed their use of bots, and I hope others will do the same, so I can stop reading their 'work'.
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    > The internet burst the bubble that news agencies possessed editorial integrity, and that has cost them business. That's a nice explanation and particularly common since the 2000s, but the problem with it is that the decline in perception of most mainstream news sources (particularly newspapers) and the resulting decline in the industry was already widely discussed before the internet, as anything other than ARPANET, existed, and certainly before it was a major factor in public perception of the news.
- adestefan 13y ago
  There is nothing modern about that. That's how journalism has always worked.
khafra 13y ago
> The logical extension of this software is to replace the phrase 'earthquake report'. You're asking for a principled, rather than arbitrary, place to insert human writers into the mix? I'd say a human writer might be needed when the story involes human agency; or when there's continuing human interest in the story. There's no value-add for involving a human in the initial notification of a small earthquake; no human angle, no human perspective. If geologists issue a press release saying this presages Los Angeles falling into the ocean, then you need to involve a human. Robots can't yet parse human political language (neither can most humans), so there's a possible value-add for interpretation of a presidential press release by an expert human. Leaks and declarations of war involve human agency, and are assured of continuing human interest. Get a human to interpret them.
gamerdonkey 13y ago
I would argue that there are several logical problems with a jump from 'earthquake report' to 'news leak' or 'declaration of war'. Using only fifty words for an earthquake report implies that there was no explanation or analysis to be made of its effects. Most leaks and war declarations tend to require much more information to be covered completely, and I would not expect to find any that are fifty words or less. For a sense of scale, your comment was 188 words. My comment is 88 words.
- seanccox 13y ago
  It is a leap, true, but not an unfathomable one. My point is that such software is a nod to the primacy of expediency in the field of breaking news. I'm not certain that other kinds of breaking news would be treated differently, particularly those from official sources that utilize standard formats (like corporations and governments). If I may dig at your comment a little to illustrate my point: Your comment is shorter – more expedient, you seem to think – but you have not actually laid out any of the 'several logical problems' with my 'jump', you've merely made a claim that leaks/war declarations 'tend to require much more information' for complete coverage. I agree such issues should require that, however, I don't feel they get it. I humbly submit the coverage of the latest US invasion of Iraq, where the evidence overwhelmingly indicated a dearth of WMDs, and yet US government talking points were rarely disputed, and sometimes printed without critique. So, my hypothesis is that similar issues will definitely not get said coverage if expediency-by-software is valued more highly than analysis. There's no real solution to our difference of opinion, but you haven't actually refuted my logic, as you claim. We both agree there are different types of breaking news, and that they need to be treated differently. You trust that they will be, while I do not.
  - gamerdonkey 13y ago
    I actually don't think our opinions differ that much. I just have trouble expressing my ideas. You seem to have hit it on the nose with your last statement. I am more optimistic that these scripts will be used to generate breaking news that doesn't (yet) require much human analysis, just information that must be quickly disseminated in a readable format (such as an earthquake's geophysical qualities). This would hopefully leave more resources that would allow more rigorous journalism (such as analysis of the effects of and response to an earthquake) to thrive in the future just as deficiently as now. The word count was intended to display just how little information might be conveyed in fifty words. The inclusion of my comment's word count was simply to make the comment self-referential. Both can be safely ignored.
Houshalter 13y ago
I mean that's sort of what a lot of news is. Just a summarization of a press release, some additional details found on the internet, maybe a few quotes. It's the summarization and finding additional details that is important, just printing the entire interview or entire press release is too much.
dragonwriter 13y ago
> This removes the agency of humans that might ask complicated questions (journalists) – so I don't believe it qualifies as news or journalism, at all. Journalism at most newspapers died long before the process of uncritically transcribing information from external sources into publication format started being automated. That's what makes the automation invisible -- and therefore, acceptable -- the transition to robotic regurgitation long preceded the actual use of robots to do it.

EdiX 13y ago

A lot of modern journalism is already like this, it's a middle man between a number of sources (news agencies, PR offices, politicians) to a public. What's worse is that usually the source wants the message spread as far and wide as possible, that's why journalism is having so many economic problems recently.

seanccox 13y ago
Agreed. The internet burst the bubble that news agencies possessed editorial integrity, and that has cost them business. This just helps online media transition faster in the direction of link bait bullshit. The only people who benefit from bot composition are the wealthy and powerful. I am glad the LA Times has disclosed their use of bots, and I hope others will do the same, so I can stop reading their 'work'.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > The internet burst the bubble that news agencies possessed editorial integrity, and that has cost them business. That's a nice explanation and particularly common since the 2000s, but the problem with it is that the decline in perception of most mainstream news sources (particularly newspapers) and the resulting decline in the industry was already widely discussed before the internet, as anything other than ARPANET, existed, and certainly before it was a major factor in public perception of the news.
adestefan 13y ago
There is nothing modern about that. That's how journalism has always worked.

khafra 13y ago

> The logical extension of this software is to replace the phrase 'earthquake report'. You're asking for a principled, rather than arbitrary, place to insert human writers into the mix? I'd say a human writer might be needed when the story involes human agency; or when there's continuing human interest in the story. There's no value-add for involving a human in the initial notification of a small earthquake; no human angle, no human perspective. If geologists issue a press release saying this presages Los Angeles falling into the ocean, then you need to involve a human. Robots can't yet parse human political language (neither can most humans), so there's a possible value-add for interpretation of a presidential press release by an expert human. Leaks and declarations of war involve human agency, and are assured of continuing human interest. Get a human to interpret them.

gamerdonkey 13y ago

I would argue that there are several logical problems with a jump from 'earthquake report' to 'news leak' or 'declaration of war'. Using only fifty words for an earthquake report implies that there was no explanation or analysis to be made of its effects. Most leaks and war declarations tend to require much more information to be covered completely, and I would not expect to find any that are fifty words or less. For a sense of scale, your comment was 188 words. My comment is 88 words.

seanccox 13y ago
It is a leap, true, but not an unfathomable one. My point is that such software is a nod to the primacy of expediency in the field of breaking news. I'm not certain that other kinds of breaking news would be treated differently, particularly those from official sources that utilize standard formats (like corporations and governments). If I may dig at your comment a little to illustrate my point: Your comment is shorter – more expedient, you seem to think – but you have not actually laid out any of the 'several logical problems' with my 'jump', you've merely made a claim that leaks/war declarations 'tend to require much more information' for complete coverage. I agree such issues should require that, however, I don't feel they get it. I humbly submit the coverage of the latest US invasion of Iraq, where the evidence overwhelmingly indicated a dearth of WMDs, and yet US government talking points were rarely disputed, and sometimes printed without critique. So, my hypothesis is that similar issues will definitely not get said coverage if expediency-by-software is valued more highly than analysis. There's no real solution to our difference of opinion, but you haven't actually refuted my logic, as you claim. We both agree there are different types of breaking news, and that they need to be treated differently. You trust that they will be, while I do not.
- gamerdonkey 13y ago
  I actually don't think our opinions differ that much. I just have trouble expressing my ideas. You seem to have hit it on the nose with your last statement. I am more optimistic that these scripts will be used to generate breaking news that doesn't (yet) require much human analysis, just information that must be quickly disseminated in a readable format (such as an earthquake's geophysical qualities). This would hopefully leave more resources that would allow more rigorous journalism (such as analysis of the effects of and response to an earthquake) to thrive in the future just as deficiently as now. The word count was intended to display just how little information might be conveyed in fifty words. The inclusion of my comment's word count was simply to make the comment self-referential. Both can be safely ignored.

Houshalter 13y ago

I mean that's sort of what a lot of news is. Just a summarization of a press release, some additional details found on the internet, maybe a few quotes. It's the summarization and finding additional details that is important, just printing the entire interview or entire press release is too much.

dragonwriter 13y ago

> This removes the agency of humans that might ask complicated questions (journalists) – so I don't believe it qualifies as news or journalism, at all. Journalism at most newspapers died long before the process of uncritically transcribing information from external sources into publication format started being automated. That's what makes the automation invisible -- and therefore, acceptable -- the transition to robotic regurgitation long preceded the actual use of robots to do it.