News automation: The publishers’ treasure trove

Oct 2018–Oct 2019 Mittmedia's automated real estate articles generated 7.4 mi logged-in pageviews (17.6 mi pageviews in total) and some 900 subscription sales.

Automation in the newsroom – many publishers talk about it, relatively few have any actual experience. Where do you start? How do you generate any real benefits? It may sound like a technical issue, but the tech is actually the most straight-forward part. This blog lays out some of the top success factors for newsrooms deploying automated content and explains how it’s all about improving journalism and growing business. 

“Speed and the ability to cover all matches in every round were key factors in this project,” says Sportbladet project manager Mattias Andersson.

When a publisher decides to deploy tech for automated content, the primary reason is generally a business one – the robots generate additional coverage which in turn drive advertising and reader revenues. However, introducing data driven robot journalism has a secondary effect: It constitutes a new editorial tool – in more ways than one.

We recently received a question from two German researchers: Do journalists profit from the automated journalism or do they find themselves homeless a few years later? We reflected that this focus on the potential threat of automated content to reporters’ jobs and the quality of journalism is all but gone in Sweden. And that this may have something to do with the fact that here, almost all local media houses now use the technology every single day.

There’s an important discussion going on in our industry around the use of robots to produce journalism. Having worked in this field for several years now, we’ve heard sceptics question how it’s possible to build algorithms which create consistently reliable and correct articles. This concern is valid when the underlying data is collected by scraping the internet. But when you build your automated content on structured data sets, the risk of error is minimal.  

2018 has certainly been the year automated content – robot journalism – has had a real break-through in Swedish newsrooms. The majority of Swedish local media groups, as well as national giant Aftonbladet, daily publish automated editorial texts in collaboration with Swedish United Robots.

The 2019 edition of Schibsted’s much publicised yearly Future Report was published yesterday. We’re very happy to find robot journalism generally identified as a key trend for the future. And to find United Robots specifically featured, through our collaboration with Aftonbladet.