Now offering the Corona Watch – part of our Breaking Desk Solution

The past weeks have seen an extraordinary acceleration in the unfolding story of the coronavirus. Newsrooms are working hard to keep up with events and create a quality breaking newsservice to readers. As a part of the industry, United Robots is working intensely to assist in these efforts.

Last week, we set up the Corona Watch newsdesk tool for Schibsted’s flagship site Aftonbladet in Sweden. Corona Watch looks for relevant new information based on criteria defined by the newsroom and then sends it to the desk. According to Aftonbladet Managing Editor Michael Poromaa this solved the problem of updating the 21 regional healthcare authority websites every second, which would have been required in order to be the first to report on new corona cases. “There was an immediate effect,” says Poromaa.

The Corona Watch is a part of the United Robots Breaking Desk tool, a service to automatically discover, collect and deliver notifications/alerts to newsrooms on local, regional och national news.  Breaking Desk can be set to deliver alerts (Slack, MS Teams or another channel) on any topic or event, such as police, public transportation, traffic, alarms, 911, weather warnings, or special topics. Sources can be structured data, RSS feeds, or keyword-collected information from any website (public, government , commercial).

Breaking Desk is fast and easy to set up and adjustable when it comes to current och upcoming news situations, topics, and needs. We're currently offering this tool to all customers.