The newspaper industry has already been gutted by technological advancements as the Internet has siphoned away advertising revenue but now comes along an even greater existential threat: Bionic Journalism.
As Digiday reports:
“Over the summer, the business publisher [Forbes], which just had its most profitable year in more than a decade, rolled out a new CMS, called Bertie, which recommends article topics for contributors based on their previous output, headlines based on the sentiment of their pieces and images too. It’s also testing a tool that writes rough versions of articles that contributors can simply polish up, rather than having to write a full story from scratch.”
Essentially, what this means is that human reporters may be reduced to nothing more than glorified editors, tweaking and enhancing stories without having to bother with tedious tasks like articulating their thoughts or telling a story.
There have already been a few instances of robo-journalism in action. CBS Sports sends out automated matchup recaps for fantasy players. But Bertie takes things a step further, replacing actual journalists instead of just providing a superfluous service that no one else was providing.
So, should I be worried about having Bertie replace me? Never! You might be able to replace every other journalist but you could never replace the Idea Man!
Is Bionic Journalism the Greatest Idea Ever?
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