Bloomberg’s Micklethwait on how computers can help business journalism

John Micklethwait, editor-in-chief of Bloomberg, talks about how the investor relations role is changing and what’s next for business news at the 2016 National Investor Relations Institute annual conference.

In April, Micklethwait sent out an email to Bloomberg about how the company was beefing up its story automation efforts, and he commented on that Wednesday, saying, “In general, there’s the issue of automation,” he said. “Now it’s possible to get computers set up for alerts to tell you when precise things are happening. In some cases you feed those directly to the community. In other cases, it’s a prompt for journalists to say…Hey this has just happened. Do you think we should do a story on it? And even if you say no, at least you have to go through that process. ”

“Some people are frightened by automation, but I tend think it takes away some of the rather annoying bits of journalism and give more value to the good bits.”