How Reuters is embracing content automation

Lora Kolodny of Tech Crunch writes about how wire service Reuters is embracing content automation.

Kolodny writes, “Reuters’ Bo Rosser, Global Head of Text and Data products for Reuters News Agency, said:

“‘As every publisher knows, content performs better online when it has a visual component to it. Besides that, we want to save our editors time. If you send an editor a story with a pre-matched infographic [or video], then they do not have to spend time hunting down further content.’

“She said new technologies are constantly evaluated by Reuters by a team there called the Emerging Technology Group which is separate from the news agency.

“Reuters is not alone in its use of automation to create news. AP uses software to automate local sports reporting, and earnings reports. And ProPublica has used software to help conduct an investigation into which states are providing, or failing to provide, low-income high school students with the coursework they need to get into and succeed in college.”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.