News automation: what robots do best

In 2009, under the title “Eweb: standardized digital journalism,” four social communication students at PUCPR (I was one of them) made a series of videos for the internet as a course-completion project.

In production, the cinema technique is a university tragedy with the refinements of a pirated copy of 3D Max installed on a reading computer.

It takes less than a minute of the first video for “focus on the user” to appear prominently. In the era when BlackBerry phones were the only encrypted network, and journalists and advertising people colonized Twitter, reaching such a conclusion backed by an undergraduate degree in communication is at least very good.

Today, digital marketing and the platform business model suggest that journalists keep doing what they have always done, ethically and intelligently.

I do not see people turning to the internet for deeper analyses, for something that makes them reflect. Text on the internet will satiate for that information that updates and can be passed along. (Our translation.)

Michelle Thomé, in an interview for Eweb, in 2009.

Michelle Thomé foresaw, in her own words, the first drafts of post-truth and quantum politics. Both are, quite crudely, when opinions and facts have the same weight. It is the “what matters is that I express myself.”

American lead

But something had stayed the same. Journalist Luiz Oliveira handled the digital side of the newspaper Gazeta do Povo, and, for him, text on the internet kept the format created by the Americans.

The lead, widely appreciated for the way it chains information and optimizes reading time, answers the basic questions:

what,
who,
how,
when,
where, and
why
(as one variation or another).

The year after Eweb’s publication, Sharon Jeanine Abdalla researched for the Federal University of Paraná “Lead and inverted pyramid: the influence of the American model on Paraná journalism.” She interviewed journalist Aroldo Murá G. Haygert.

There is no point in having lead and those techniques all neat if the newspaper is junk. (…) The newspaper ranked its headlines, they had a number of strokes, which was very difficult at the time. When you work with typography it is complicated, with the computer, today, it is easier to do that. (Our translation.)

Journalist Aroldo Murá G. Haygert.

Robots can write

More than ten years ago, Eweb discussed the trend of journalism automation, starting from the lead. Once the parameters were written and refined, reality data could be updated automatically, whether by search engines or by APIs (which are a type of connection between databases).

An example. The highway police would provide, in real time, the number of accidents, fines, traffic arrests, etc. News sites would reproduce, through thematic panels, stories, notifications, whatever, content that dispenses with intellectual work. Robots would write:

“Two people were arrested for driving without a license during the long weekend”;

“BR-277 has a 2 km line toward the coast, starting from Jardim Botânico”;

“Emergency: fog at the entrance to Serra do Mar reduces visibility to 5 m”;

That is left for journalists

The reporter relieved of the live link at the roadside would have time to propose what machines would not do in an unprecedented way, such as reporting on the transgenerational consequences of violent deaths. Do families repeat the pattern of dying on the road?

Or routine things.

How much does the government invest in educational campaigns?
How long do they last?
How is their reach measured?
What research is used to create them?
Does the taxpayer floor the accelerator because they pay tolls?
Do people fined for speeding like to drive?
When will the phone companies install internet on the beach?

Copied by the French 😏

The soundtrack used in Eweb is from the album “Deep Cuts,” released in 2003, by the Swedish siblings of “The Knife.” In 2020, French state television Franceinfo used one of the songs from that album for a program promo.