8 ms·

Robot Journalism Is Great for Journalists

43 points by fraqed 12y ago

paletoy 12y ago
The next attack on journalism might be great curation, not robots. Why ? because no single human has the capability to write the best story in any given case.Add to that the capabilities of unpaid bloggers, industry insiders and the like, you get a serious threat to journalism. Alas ,there are no great content curation tools AFAIK.But when there will be...
- lemma 12y ago
  Can you expand on this? What would great curation/curation tools look like? I feel like I agree with this insight, but don't know much about the field.
  - marban 12y ago
    Keep an eye on http://www.superious.com http://www.superious.com
    - n0rm 12y ago
      I expected it to ask for my email address and tell me when they go live. Do you know of any trick to automatize the lookout?
      - uptown 12y ago
        https://www.changedetection.com/ https://www.changedetection.com/ should do what you're looking for.
  - paletoy 12y ago
    Giving you articles that are fun,strongly insightful and 100% right almost every time, on your exact interests is the goal of a great curation.Bonus points for short an to the point writeup when appropriate. How do you do it ? not sure yet. The best that i can do today to do is constantly weeding out my blogs/twitter subscriptions. But i'm far from that goal.
    - austenallred 12y ago
      That's similar to what we're trying to do with http://grasswire.com http://grasswire.com, but not so much "articles" as "tweets/videos," and crowdsource fact-checking after the fact. So, maybe not very much like it at all, but I agree with your original analysis that curation will be king. News/journalism feels very much like the Internet did pre-Google. There has to be some aspect of real-time curation/fact-checking built in IMO. But obviously I'm extremely biased.
    - TelmoMenezes 12y ago
      > ... on your exact interests is the goal of a great curation I am not so sure this is a good idea. It will trap people in bubbles, where they will find only an echo chamber for their existing opinions and never have them challenged. It will insulates them from serendipity and it will prevent them from exploring, acquiring new interests and perspectives and so on.
      - chris_va 12y ago
        People keep worrying about filter bubbles, which is a rational but misguided fear. Having written some of these systems (Google News), it really does not happen the way people imagine it would. At the end of the day, the factors that define a good curation framework do not actually create a filter bubble. People love serendipitously discovering new content, and the optimizing for the "best article" does not actually optimize for a singular viewpoint. As a result, any curation system that produces a filter bubble will not actually feel as good of a system to the end user, and will not get as much adoption.
        paletoy 12y ago
        Chris, any tips on how find good curated sources ?
        declan 12y ago
        Yep. I’ve heard complaints about “filter bubbles” before, but have always found these to be entirely theoretical — not a critique of an actual implemented system. In reality, as <chris_va> says, a “filter bubble” is different from a “viewpoint bubble.” An example: If our recommendation engine at http://recent.io/ http://recent.io/ concludes you’re interested in Barack Obama, it will (surprise!) recommend articles about Barack Obama. It doesn’t filter by political viewpoint. You’ll get articles from both lefty sources and right-leaning sources. Also, of course, we offer “top news” if you prefer!
- EGreg 12y ago
  I think Pete Cashmore founder of Mashable spoke about the rise of curation a few years ago.
danso 12y ago
"Robot journalism" is good for journalism in the same way that outsourcing is good for programmers and engineers: drudge code entry that needs to be done can be identified and contracted out at a much lower rate, therefore saving the in-house programmers to do innovative, business-expanding work. However, that reality doesn't always follow, depending on the dynamics of the business and the forward-thinkingness of management. And this is in engineering/technical companies that are making viable amounts of money. Will the managers who run cratering news companies have the same foresight? Not going to hold my breath. (note: I fully support the automation of writing/observation of digital feeds...I'm just skeptical that the journalism industry will apply it either efficiently or in a way that benefits their human workers)
- keithpeter 12y ago
  >> "Journalism is becoming a more highly skilled job,” Doctor said. “Simply showing up, in the Woody Allen sense — being able to read a press release or interview a single person, and write up a story that is understandable in 750 words — that's not going to be enough." Just wondering where these higher skilled journalists are going to learn their trade? Longer in j-school? So more debt? The OA was I suspect given routine business reports to write as a cub reporter to get him used to deadlines, structures, systems, house style &c. Same with minor league sports reports in provincial newspapers in the UK.
Houshalter 12y ago
I don't see how this is useful. It's just converting some short table of statistics into an unnecessarily long paragraph in natural language.
- hvs 12y ago
  Some people see tables of statistics and think, "AUGH! MATH!" Whereas the same information presented in natural language does not generate the same response. I'm also assuming that the software can provide a little more context than just that sort of opening paragraph. If not, I agree with you that this isn't exactly earth-shattering software (then again, what is these days?).
  - mckoss 12y ago
    Also a better format for text to speech.
Houshalter 12y ago
I wonder if you got a large dataset of these short human written articles, and trained a generative model to produce them character by character. This was done on wikipedia: https://www.cs.toronto.edu/~ilya/fourth.cgi https://www.cs.toronto.edu/~ilya/fourth.cgi
benologist 12y ago
Robot journalism isn't going to be great for journalists. Publications will quickly gravitate towards the content farm model where every article will be accompanied by 20 - 30 keyword permutations and no overhead for articles that don't pull social media traffic/shares/links. You can already see companies like Mashable pushing the limits of doing this by hand. I wonder if/how Google will differentiate between automated news vs machine-generated spam?
- xorcist 12y ago
  > I wonder if/how Google will differentiate between automated news vs machine-generated spam? If history is any guide, I think this line will be more and more difficult to draw.
  - chris_va 12y ago
    It's easier than you might think. Machines are, if nothing else, good at identifying things other machines have created. People also often forget that Google doesn't just have to look at the page content to analyze something. Reader behavior, for example, can tell you a lot.
    - xorcist 12y ago
      I'm not so sure about that. Machine curated news could easily be used as base for spam, for example.
jusben1369 12y ago
On a totally different note this startup, Automated Insights, is based in Durham NC (where my startup Spreedly is also based). There are all the elements of a great startup scene; a clustering of talent, a decent incubator that does two sessions per year at around $150K per startup, cheap real estate, excellent food and affordable living. The greater area has 3 good schools. There are numerous other startups here but I can't help but give a plug for what's happening as I know many developers here wrestle with work/life balance. Right now it's very good in Durham. Biggest drawback is lack of local seed funding but things like AngelList are making that less of an issue than a few years ago.
EGreg 12y ago
Whatever a robot can do, they can do a million times an hour. Next we'll have robot comments on robot blogs. We already have impersonal birthday wishes on fb -- where you can make an app that automatically wishes happy birthday. And the recipient can install an app to automatically thank everyone. It's as I was half joking in the past -- guys will outsource their robots to have sex with their wives' robots.
mkhpalm 12y ago
Yes, but what about robot sensationalism? Do we have the technology to make something great for sensationalists?

43 points by fraqed 12y ago

The next attack on journalism might be great curation, not robots. Why ? because no single human has the capability to write the best story in any given case.Add to that the capabilities of unpaid bloggers, industry insiders and the like, you get a serious threat to journalism. Alas ,there are no great content curation tools AFAIK.But when there will be...

lemma 12y ago
Can you expand on this? What would great curation/curation tools look like? I feel like I agree with this insight, but don't know much about the field.
- marban 12y ago
  Keep an eye on http://www.superious.com http://www.superious.com
  - n0rm 12y ago
    I expected it to ask for my email address and tell me when they go live. Do you know of any trick to automatize the lookout?
    - uptown 12y ago
      https://www.changedetection.com/ https://www.changedetection.com/ should do what you're looking for.
- paletoy 12y ago
  Giving you articles that are fun,strongly insightful and 100% right almost every time, on your exact interests is the goal of a great curation.Bonus points for short an to the point writeup when appropriate. How do you do it ? not sure yet. The best that i can do today to do is constantly weeding out my blogs/twitter subscriptions. But i'm far from that goal.
  - austenallred 12y ago
    That's similar to what we're trying to do with http://grasswire.com http://grasswire.com, but not so much "articles" as "tweets/videos," and crowdsource fact-checking after the fact. So, maybe not very much like it at all, but I agree with your original analysis that curation will be king. News/journalism feels very much like the Internet did pre-Google. There has to be some aspect of real-time curation/fact-checking built in IMO. But obviously I'm extremely biased.
  - TelmoMenezes 12y ago
    > ... on your exact interests is the goal of a great curation I am not so sure this is a good idea. It will trap people in bubbles, where they will find only an echo chamber for their existing opinions and never have them challenged. It will insulates them from serendipity and it will prevent them from exploring, acquiring new interests and perspectives and so on.
    - chris_va 12y ago
      People keep worrying about filter bubbles, which is a rational but misguided fear. Having written some of these systems (Google News), it really does not happen the way people imagine it would. At the end of the day, the factors that define a good curation framework do not actually create a filter bubble. People love serendipitously discovering new content, and the optimizing for the "best article" does not actually optimize for a singular viewpoint. As a result, any curation system that produces a filter bubble will not actually feel as good of a system to the end user, and will not get as much adoption.
      - paletoy 12y ago
        Chris, any tips on how find good curated sources ?
      - declan 12y ago
        Yep. I’ve heard complaints about “filter bubbles” before, but have always found these to be entirely theoretical — not a critique of an actual implemented system. In reality, as <chris_va> says, a “filter bubble” is different from a “viewpoint bubble.” An example: If our recommendation engine at http://recent.io/ http://recent.io/ concludes you’re interested in Barack Obama, it will (surprise!) recommend articles about Barack Obama. It doesn’t filter by political viewpoint. You’ll get articles from both lefty sources and right-leaning sources. Also, of course, we offer “top news” if you prefer!
EGreg 12y ago
I think Pete Cashmore founder of Mashable spoke about the rise of curation a few years ago.

danso 12y ago

"Robot journalism" is good for journalism in the same way that outsourcing is good for programmers and engineers: drudge code entry that needs to be done can be identified and contracted out at a much lower rate, therefore saving the in-house programmers to do innovative, business-expanding work. However, that reality doesn't always follow, depending on the dynamics of the business and the forward-thinkingness of management. And this is in engineering/technical companies that are making viable amounts of money. Will the managers who run cratering news companies have the same foresight? Not going to hold my breath. (note: I fully support the automation of writing/observation of digital feeds...I'm just skeptical that the journalism industry will apply it either efficiently or in a way that benefits their human workers)

keithpeter 12y ago
>> "Journalism is becoming a more highly skilled job,” Doctor said. “Simply showing up, in the Woody Allen sense — being able to read a press release or interview a single person, and write up a story that is understandable in 750 words — that's not going to be enough." Just wondering where these higher skilled journalists are going to learn their trade? Longer in j-school? So more debt? The OA was I suspect given routine business reports to write as a cub reporter to get him used to deadlines, structures, systems, house style &c. Same with minor league sports reports in provincial newspapers in the UK.

Houshalter 12y ago

I don't see how this is useful. It's just converting some short table of statistics into an unnecessarily long paragraph in natural language.

hvs 12y ago
Some people see tables of statistics and think, "AUGH! MATH!" Whereas the same information presented in natural language does not generate the same response. I'm also assuming that the software can provide a little more context than just that sort of opening paragraph. If not, I agree with you that this isn't exactly earth-shattering software (then again, what is these days?).
- mckoss 12y ago
  Also a better format for text to speech.

Houshalter 12y ago

I wonder if you got a large dataset of these short human written articles, and trained a generative model to produce them character by character. This was done on wikipedia: https://www.cs.toronto.edu/~ilya/fourth.cgi https://www.cs.toronto.edu/~ilya/fourth.cgi

benologist 12y ago

Robot journalism isn't going to be great for journalists. Publications will quickly gravitate towards the content farm model where every article will be accompanied by 20 - 30 keyword permutations and no overhead for articles that don't pull social media traffic/shares/links. You can already see companies like Mashable pushing the limits of doing this by hand. I wonder if/how Google will differentiate between automated news vs machine-generated spam?

xorcist 12y ago
> I wonder if/how Google will differentiate between automated news vs machine-generated spam? If history is any guide, I think this line will be more and more difficult to draw.
- chris_va 12y ago
  It's easier than you might think. Machines are, if nothing else, good at identifying things other machines have created. People also often forget that Google doesn't just have to look at the page content to analyze something. Reader behavior, for example, can tell you a lot.
  - xorcist 12y ago
    I'm not so sure about that. Machine curated news could easily be used as base for spam, for example.

jusben1369 12y ago

On a totally different note this startup, Automated Insights, is based in Durham NC (where my startup Spreedly is also based). There are all the elements of a great startup scene; a clustering of talent, a decent incubator that does two sessions per year at around $150K per startup, cheap real estate, excellent food and affordable living. The greater area has 3 good schools. There are numerous other startups here but I can't help but give a plug for what's happening as I know many developers here wrestle with work/life balance. Right now it's very good in Durham. Biggest drawback is lack of local seed funding but things like AngelList are making that less of an issue than a few years ago.

EGreg 12y ago

Whatever a robot can do, they can do a million times an hour. Next we'll have robot comments on robot blogs. We already have impersonal birthday wishes on fb -- where you can make an app that automatically wishes happy birthday. And the recipient can install an app to automatically thank everyone. It's as I was half joking in the past -- guys will outsource their robots to have sex with their wives' robots.

mkhpalm 12y ago

Yes, but what about robot sensationalism? Do we have the technology to make something great for sensationalists?