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

What does automated local content look like on a news site? In order to help publishers picture what our content products could do for their local sites, we've created a Showcase site, populated entirely with our in-house generated content. From live traffic updates in Los Angeles, to Warnings of extreme weather across Texas, Hurricane watches off Florida to the most expensive houses sold in Manchester or Miami – it's all here, continuously updated. 

Most of the small local news publishers our team at United Robots talk to in the US battle one common problem. Their newsrooms do not have the resources to produce all the unique local content their readers expect. The two topics that most often come up as underreported are high school sports and real estate. Here, we're going to focus on the latter, and explain how content automation can help under-resourced local newsrooms get a thriving real estate section off the ground.

United Robots is now live with six different automated content products across some 30 newsrooms in the US – with Weather Warnings and Real Estate sales the most popular ones, and Wildfire updates the most recent. Insights from our work with our US publisher partners include that it's important to decide why and how you're automating content production, and that there are different ways for that content to generate value for your newsroom and readers.