Our AI writing assistant, WriteUp, can assist you in easily writing any text. Click here to experience its capabilities.

AI in the newsroom: Robots are now helping drive up subscriptions

View Original View Raw

Summary

AI tools are increasingly being integrated into journalistic life and used by publishers such as Reuters, AP, The Washington Post and Forbes for creating news stories and detecting trends. MittMedia, a Swedish local news publisher, found success in using an automated content system to publish 480 articles per week about real estate sales, which brought in almost a thousand paying subscribers. AI can free up journalists' time to focus on complex or more important stories that require creativity, intuition, and critical thinking. A study looking into motivations of newspaper subscribers showed that they valued access to local news and reliable, accurate facts.

Q&As

What are some ways AI is being used in journalism?
AI is being used in journalism to help identify compelling stories, to collaborate in content creation, to create news stories dominated by facts and figures, to detect trends and anomalies, to alert the newsroom when election results start trending in unexpected directions, to analyze financial reports, to provide reporters with rough drafts and story templates, and to publish articles about properties sold.

What did The Washington Post use its AI tool for during the 2016 election?
The Washington Post used its AI tool, Heliograf, to alert the newsroom when election results started trending in unexpected directions.

What does MittMedia's "Homeowners Bot" do?
MittMedia's "Homeowners Bot" writes short descriptions of houses that have been sold in the local market, accompanied by interesting angles, and adds images of the properties from Google Street View.

What did a study by the American Press Institute and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research find about newspaper subscribers?
The study found that 60% of the respondents said that their pre-subscription motivations included the desire to access local news and 31% wanted to support local journalism. Post-subscription, 30% said they did so to get access to local news and 78% said they valued getting reliable, accurate facts.

How does AI enable journalists to do more high-value work?
AI enables journalists to focus on complex or more important stories that robots won’t be able to do justice to, like opinion pieces and stories that require creativity, intuition, and critical thinking.

AI Comments

👍 This article is an insightful look into how AI is being used in newsrooms to provide more accurate news stories and drive up subscriptions with automated content. It is great to see how AI is freeing up journalists to focus on more important stories.

👎 AI tools are still limited in their ability to provide complex stories that require creativity, intuition, and critical thinking. It is concerning that AI tools are taking over some journalistic jobs.

AI Discussion

Me: It's about how AI is being used to help drive up subscriptions in newsrooms. It talks about how various publishers are using automated content creation tools to create news stories about various topics such as financial news, sports coverage, election results, etc. It also talks about how one publisher, MittMedia, used its Homeowner Bot to create articles about properties sold to drive up subscriptions.

Friend: Wow, that's quite interesting. What implications does this have?

Me: Well, AI is becoming increasingly integrated into journalistic life, and it's becoming a necessity for many journalists. Automated content creation tools are being used to create stories that are dominated by facts and figures, which can make it easier for reporters to cover news quickly and easily. Additionally, it can help free up journalists' time to focus on complex or more important stories. Finally, it seems that AI is also helping to drive up subscriptions, as people are motivated to subscribe to access local news and reliable facts.

Action items

Research AI tools available for journalism and explore how they can be integrated into journalistic life.
Experiment with automated content creation tools to create news stories that are dominated by facts and figures.
Analyze the motivations of newspaper subscribers to understand what drives them to subscribe and how automated content can be used to increase subscriptions.

Technical terms

AI (Artificial Intelligence): AI is a type of computer technology that is designed to simulate human intelligence and behavior. It is used to create automated systems that can perform tasks that would normally require human intelligence.
Digital Publishing: Digital publishing is the process of creating and distributing digital content, such as books, magazines, newspapers, and other forms of media, through digital channels.
Reader Revenue: Reader revenue is the money generated from readers who pay for content, such as subscriptions, paywalls, and donations.
Heliograf: Heliograf is an AI-powered tool developed by The Washington Post to help journalists identify and cover news stories.
Cyborg: Cyborg is an automated content creation tool developed by Bloomberg to analyze financial reports and produce news stories.
Bertie: Bertie is an AI tool developed by Forbes to provide reporters with rough drafts and story templates.
Homeowners Bot: Homeowners Bot is an AI tool developed by MittMedia to write short descriptions of houses that have been sold in the local market.