Bloomberg’s Toulon: New technology will help tell more stories

Karen Toulon, senior editor of diversity, standards and training at Bloomberg News, spoke with Rebekah Friedman at the University of South Carolina in advance of her Baldwin business journalism lecture this week.

Here is an excerpt:

What keeps you in business journalism?
“Business journalism” covers everything — from the financial markets and economic news, to government spending policies, the costs of climate change, and companies and industries around the world. Business journalism — and specifically the fact-based, data-driven reporting that Bloomberg does — helps us understand what is likely to happen, what is happening, why it’s happening and hopefully allows us — around the world — to make better-informed decisions.

With some news organizations using “robots” to write earnings reports, what does the future of business journalism look like?
Automation across all industries will cause some job shifting. But business reporting fundamentally is not going to be undone by “robots” any more than radio for example has been thwarted by the “robot” of its day — television. Indeed audio — podcasting — has blossomed under new technologies. So, what does the future of business journalism look like? I believe that new technologies will create new opportunities and allow for more diverse voices, more points of view, more ways of story-telling, and more ways of delivering those stories to more audiences.

Read more here.