How media used automated journalism during pandemic
Newsrooms with computational thinking or computational journalism have had a considerable edge in using automated news quickly and efficiently to cover the pandemic. On the other hand, delegating the automated journalism to external content providers can give tech companies too much influence over content.
The Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia’s School of Journalism has studied how nine newsrooms used automated journalism to cover the COVID-19. The study is presented by Samuel Danzon-Chambaud, Innovation Fellow at the Center.
The study says that ad hoc solutions designed around the use of automated news that was generated in-house or through a third-party provider seemed to involve levels of algorithmic programming that editorial staff can comprehend.
“Although the template-based approaches that they are building on are sometimes criticized for being too formulaic and less enjoyable to read than human-written news, they can at least be tweaked to achieve editorial goals.”
“The more media practitioners engage with this tinkering of automated news systems, the more they develop their programmatic skills and thus reinforce their ability to exert control and have a say over the computational turn that journalism is taking.”
The report says that using external content providers for automated journalism can create compelling pieces of news but could result in technological firms holding more influence over the future of journalism unless journalists are trained in elements of machine learning and technologists get a good grasp of journalism practice.
“Whether this concerns template-based systems or advanced machine learning models, it is essential that media managers and executives maintain core journalistic routines such as letting journalists conduct complementary interviews or on-the-spot forms of reporting, and do not solely focus on an exclusive use of automated news in their media strategy.”
“Indeed, journalists exercising the critical thinking that goes with these activities in a man-machine marriage, for instance, could result in quality content being produced at a faster pace, whereas automated news alone could hardly be differentiated from a competitor’s when produced at a massive scale and ultimately hinder the organization’s position in SEO rankings.”
The study comprises nine newsrooms that have used automated journalism to cover the pandemic: Bayerischer Rundfunk (Bavaria’s public service broadcaster, Germany); Bloomberg News (news agency, United States); Canadian Press (news agency, Canada); Helsingin Sanomat (newspaper, Finland); NTB (news agency, Norway); Omni (news service, Sweden); RADAR (news agency, United Kingdom); Tamedia (media group, Switzerland); The Times (newspaper, United Kingdom).
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