This Week: Free Online Course in AI Journalism

JournalismAI is hosting a free online conference this week, offering numerous sessions exploring how AI is automating and changing the production of news.

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If you’re unable to attend some of the conference’s events this week, no worries: JournalismAI is promising to post videos of all the sessions sometime after the conference concludes.

The conference, dubbed the JournalismAI Festival — and funded in part by the Google News Initiative — offers a quick study on the current state of AI in news.

It’s an important online meeting for any editor or writer seeking an update on AI’s current and future impact on journalism jobs.

Specific sessions include expert analysis by AI practitioners on how AI is:

~Automating the production of news stories

~Mining long-form news stories to auto-produce shorter, ‘snackable’ news content

~Automating the production of feature stories

~Being adopted by small and mid-sized news organizations — despite its sometimes hefty price tag

Here’s a curated guide to sessions most closely focused on how AI is automating — and auto-monitoring — news production:

(All start times for the sessions are based on GMT/London Time)

*Welcome to the JournalismAI Festival!

Nov. 29, 12:15 p.m. — 1 p.m.

This is a get-acquainted session offering an overview on the adoption of AI in journalism across the globe — based on research by JournalismAI.

It’s a good first stop to grab the broad outlines of what’s going on with AI in journalism — and how you can get the most from the festival this week.

*Smaller than Articles: Defining, Extracting, and Composing the Building Blocks of Modular Journalism

Mon., Nov. 29, 2:30 p.m. — 3:15 p.m.

During the past few years, some newspapers have been mining long-form news articles to produce much shorter, ‘snackable’ stories for some news consumers.

The theory: This demographic of readers are more interested in a quick synopsis of the story — rather than its full depth.

This session offers insights into how editors, writers and others in news organizations can use AI to mine and produce such ‘snackable’ journalism from traditional, longer-form articles.

*Automating the COVID-19 Story in the Newsroom

Tues., Nov. 30, 10:30 a.m. — 11:15 a.m.

During the past decade, AI has been commonly used to auto-write news stories from databases.

News outlets like UK-based Radar, for example, will mine a database on say the state of health in the UK and run the data found there through story templates.

Those story templates customize placement of that data in a pre-fabricated skeleton of a story, to auto-produce news stories that are tailored for highly localized audiences.

Other news and other organizations are auto-generating writing in the same way to cover (to reference a few):

~real estate

~sports

~medicine

~retailer promotions

~finance

~city specific news

~company reports

This session explores how Sky News is using this database-to-news technique to regularly auto-generate articles on the Coronavirus.

*The Pudding Talks AI

Tues, Nov. 30, 4:15 — 5 p.m.

News outlet The Pudding has come up with a way to use AI to auto-produce witty and humorous feature stories.

This session details how The Pudding is using AI to pull-off this especially creative turn on automated writing.

*Kickstarting the AI Journey as a Small Newsroom

Wed, Dec. 1, 10:30 a.m. — 11:15 a.m.

So far, the option to bring AI onboard has largely been reserved for larger media outlets.

They have the deep pockets to experiment with technology at length — and hire experts to integrate AI into their operations.

This session focuses on how small and medium-sized news outlets based in Africa, the Middle East and Europe are bucking that trend — pulling off adding AI to their news production on a much smaller budget.

*Larger than Articles: How Might We Build News Experiences from Smaller Units of Content?:

Dec. 1, 12:15 p.m. — 1 p.m.

This session focuses on how media outlets are stitching together longer-form journalism from snackable content.

Presenting are Sveriges Radio and TX Group.

Both have been producing snackable content collations in the form of podcast mixes and news storylines.

*How to Make the Most of AI for Your Newsroom

Wed., Dec. 1, 4:15 p.m. — 5 p.m.

Small and medium-sized news outlets can bring AI into the newsroom — as long as they’re careful about the expense of the AI tools they choose.

This session focuses on AI tools that are easier on the budget — and how that tech has been adopted by less-than-behemoth-sized news organizations.

*How Might We Use AI and Audience Insights to Design More Relevant and Interactive News Narratives?:

Thurs., Dec. 2, 10:30 a.m. — 11:15 a.m.

AI is also being used to analyze how a news consumer interacts with digitized media.

The goal: Learn what a consumer is really looking for, so you can serve-up the precise kind of news content that consumer really wants.

Presenters on this panel offer their insights on how to get this spin on AI-enhanced news just right.

*Battling Disinformation Using Machine Learning:

Thurs., Dec. 2, 12:15 — 1:00 p.m.

One of the downsides of AI automation is its ability to generate torrents of disinformation when it falls into the wrong hands.

The solution? A tool designed to combat such digitized disinformation: CivicSignal MediaCloud, the focus of this session.

It’s a machine learning tool that monitors news media in 54 countries across Africa.

CivicSignal MediaCloud boasts a database of 11 million+ stories, which expands each day by approximately 22,600 additional news stories.

*Facts at Your Fingertips: Automating Information Modules:

Fri., Dec. 3, 12:15 p.m. — 1 p.m.

One of the easiest pieces of news content to auto-generate is the ‘fact box.’

It’s a short-and-sweet news summary, which offers key facts about news that can either stand on its own — or be added as a supplement to a longer news story.

This session focuses on how fact boxes work and how they can be created using AI.

*The Future of AI in Journalism:

Fri., Dec. 3, 2:30 p.m. — 3:15 p.m.

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After a week of sessions, this JournalismAI panel will circle back to discuss where AI and journalism is headed.

The crystal-balling includes an emphasis on how current and future journalists can best position themselves as AI tech increasingly pervades the news industry.

*Full Program:

This week’s conference also features eight additional sessions offering a focus beyond how AI is automating journalism. You can check-out the full listing for all sessions on the conference’s Web site.

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Grammarly
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Joe Dysart is editor of RobotWritersAI.com and a tech journalist with 20+ years experience. His work has appeared in 150+ publications, including The New York Times and the Financial Times of London.

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