Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Ever heard of Journatic? You should

Journatic is the organization that largely uses algorithms and offshore "reporters" to write local news. The Chicago Tribune, in its continuing descent to irrelevance, has signed with the company to produce content for its TribLocal editions.

Building off that, NetNewsNet.com published an interview with Journatic CEO Brian Timpone, who does an excellent job of describing just what the Journatic produces for newspapers while not really describing how it does it.

To be totally honest, I'm not dead-set against using outside providers like this for some of the excruciatingly-detailed obtaining content (though I refuse to call them stories) like bringing in agendas of city council meetings or other routine data collections. I just want journalists to be interpreting that data.

But clearly part of today's media management is in love with things like Journatic. It's flashy. It's new. It's digital. It's cheap. Therefore, it will be a success.