ISSUE

Summer 2015

Automation in the Newsroom

As automation makes significant gains in the newsroom, Celeste LeCompte explores how the Associated Press, ProPublica, The New York Times, and other news outlets are using stories written by algorithms to expand coverage of business and sports, engage audiences, and respond to breaking news. In the process, automation is raising new questions about what it means to encode news judgment in algorithms, how to customize stories to target specific audiences without making ethical missteps, and how to communicate these new efforts to audiences.

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Articles

Automation in the Newsroom
Technology

Automation in the Newsroom

Philana Patterson, assistant business editor for the Associated Press, has been covering business since the mid-1990s. Before joining the AP, she worked as a business reporter for both local newspapers…
Celeste LeCompte
September 1, 2015
A Brief Guide to Robot Reporting Tools
Journalist’s Trade

A Brief Guide to Robot Reporting Tools

Transparency is pointless if no one is watching, but there’s no way a human reporter can keep up with the open data created by a modern city, let alone a…
Jonathan Stray
September 1, 2015
Sounding

In China, Legal Affairs Reporting Is Not Just a Beat

As a legal reporter in China for the past six years, I have spent a lot of time in courthouses. Judges almost always bar reporters from sitting in courtrooms and…
Jieqi Luo
August 27, 2015
How Radio Reporters Turn Ideas into Feelings
Books

How Radio Reporters Turn Ideas into Feelings

Spending hours sitting alone at a drawing table, cartoonist Jessica Abel often listens to public radio, a habit that turned her into a devotee. Abel calls radio “the most fertile…
Jessica Abel
August 25, 2015
Why News Outlets Are Watching India's Next Billion Internet Users
Features

Why News Outlets Are Watching India’s Next Billion Internet Users

Every morning, Mr. and Mrs. Singh gently shoo their dog away from the freshly delivered copies of The Times of India and the Hindustan Times, two of India’s oldest and…
Hasit Shah
August 24, 2015
Medium's Evan Hansen: “The Real Unit of Exchange Is … People”
Live @ Lippmann

Medium’s Evan Hansen: “The Real Unit of Exchange Is … People”

Evan Hansen is head of content labs at Medium, the online publisher created by Twitter co-founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone in 2012. Previously, Hansen was editor in chief of…
Evan Hansen
August 20, 2015
The Value of Slow Journalism in the Age of Instant Information
Features

The Value of Slow Journalism in the Age of Instant Information

Paul Salopek had been writing international stories for more than 20 years before he decided to slow down. “I was a conventional foreign correspondent zipping around the world doing fireman…
Michael Blanding
August 19, 2015
NPR correspondent Frank Langfitt, NF ’03, finds his best stories behind the wheel of a free cab he drives in Shanghai
Niemans @ Work

NPR correspondent Frank Langfitt, NF ’03, finds his best stories behind the wheel of a free cab he drives in Shanghai

In the summers during college, I drove taxis in Philadelphia. All sorts of people opened up in the anonymity of a cab. Three decades later, while covering China for NPR,…
Frank Langfitt
August 19, 2015
With his new virtual-reality project, Karim Ben Khelifa, NF ’13, fosters empathy
Niemans @ Work

With his new virtual-reality project, Karim Ben Khelifa, NF ’13, fosters empathy

after 15 years of assignments in war zones around the globe, I’ve found that the hopes, dreams, and nightmares of enemies are often more similar than they are different. This…
Karim Ben Khelifa
August 17, 2015
Independent Journalism Finds its Voice in Egypt
Features

Independent Journalism Finds its Voice in Egypt

One day last May, Egyptian private television station TEN broadcast an interview with Justice Minister Mahfouz Saber in which he expressed the opinion that a law graduate whose father was…
Magdi Abdelhadi
August 7, 2015
Margie Mason, NF ’09, collaborated with AP colleagues to report stories that helped free enslaved fishermen in Southeast Asia
Niemans @ Work

Margie Mason, NF ’09, collaborated with AP colleagues to report stories that helped free enslaved fishermen in Southeast Asia

So often, journalists are quick to dismiss stories that have been done before, especially those that have been written over and over again. But what if you could take a…
Margie Mason
July 22, 2015
How to Deter Doxxing
Watchdog

How to Deter Doxxing

Last November, Anna Merlan got an unexpected e-mail from Domino’s Pizza. The pizzas she ordered were ready, and she could pay for them in cash when they were delivered. The…
Rose Eveleth
July 17, 2015