What we’re talking about: the latest about news automation

This week, regional title Fædrelandsvennen, part of Polaris Media group, in Kristiansand in southern Norway, has unveiled its brand new Home Sales section, where they publish automated real estate articles about sales in a number of municipalities in Agder county. The publisher's launch included an explanatory article about the new Robot journalist working for them, who retrieves the data, calculates price per square meter, compares it to other homes in the area and writes the text. The articles include Google streetview images of the properties as well as maps and aerial photos with a street address label.

Swedish local media group Gota Media use automated real estate articles as part of their reader revenue strategy. With a conversion rate of 2%, the Real Estate Robot is currently the best converting byline across the group's ten news sites.

Swedish sports data and media veteran EverySport Media Group have signed an agreement with us for automated content from the Sports Robot as well as the Transaction bot. The agreement covers match reports in ice hockey, football and floor ball as well as texts on player transactions in ice hockey. ESMG is a strategic partner to United Robots for sports data, and the two text types covered by the new agreement will be based on ESMG data from the Everysport database and Elite Prospects, the world’s largest ice hockey database, respectively. 

Swedish local media group Gota Media is the latest of a growing fleet of Scandinavian publishing houses who see the value of automating as much of their routine reporting as possible. Since we launched in 2015, with Mittmedia (now in Bonnier News Local) as our first partner publisher, newsroom automation has become standard practice in Sweden, freeing up editorial resources and driving business effects, including reader revenues.