How Automation Is Becoming Intelligent Friend In Uk Local Media Newsrooms

5th April 2023

Kurt Barling at https://pressgazette.co.uk/ writing about how automation is creeping into Journalism around the UK.

With automated journalism beginning to make its mark in UK newsrooms, new research looks at how local journalists perceive and use the technology.

Beyond the hype of the Chat-GPT discussion and predictions of the demise of all things human, Sina Thäsler-Kordonouri, a PhD student at Ludwig Maximilian University in Germany, and myself have completed a research project on the impact of AI-driven automated journalism in UK local newsrooms.

Our research focused on the process of human-computer collaboration and the use of algorithms to convert numerical data in particular, into meaningful story inputs where it is then up to human journalists to interpret the stories in ways that readers can easily digest.

We interviewed media practitioners from a range of local news companies in the UK that are currently using automated journalism provided by the Press Association through its affiliate RADAR (Reporters And Data And Robots), as well as employees from this news automation service.

Local news companies are struggling with a failing business model reliant on advertising revenue and declining readerships and one response has been to radically reduce staff numbers, consequentially increasing the workload on the remaining employees.

Read the full article HERE