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Automated journalistic writing – the upsides and downsides

June 28, 2016

Ever more newsrooms are experimenting with automatically generated text. It sounds ominously Orwellian, but it could be a boon to journalists. The algorithms save time. But what about the automated articles' quality?

https://p.dw.com/p/1JEly
DW Shift Automatisierter Journalismus
Image: DW/A. Jaeckel

Automated journalistic writing

Robot journalism is already well-established in American newsrooms. Now, German editorial staffs are also looking at automatically generated text. This type of algorithm is especially well suited to articles based on recurring data, like weather, stock market and traffic reports and even sports results. Experts say it poses no threat to real journalists. The algorithms aren't meant to replace them - just to take on the busy work and leave the humans more time for in-depth research.