The Introduction of Robotic Journalism at the Danish News Agency Ritzau

The next speaker in this IAMCR 2019 is Marie Falk Eriksen, whose interest is in the introduction of robotic journalism at the Danish news agency Ritzau. Such technologies are now known under a number of terms, and describe an algorithmic process that converts data into news text with limited or no human intervention. What effects this will have on journalistic practices in the longer term remains to be seen.

Ritzau has introduced such robotic journalism tools for its financial reporting: building on predesigned story templates and standardised company earnings data, the tools will generate standard articles that report on the company performance. The is done in part to save on story production costs and redirect journalistic staff towards more interesting and complex reporting.

How does the use of this software – Autoflash – affect journalistic practices, then? First, journalists appreciate that the tool makes the reporting faster and more accurate; there is less opportunity for human error in the reporting, and articles can be published as soon as the company data are released. The journalists also appreciate being released from such routine writing tasks.

The news agency itself was also able to reduce production costs and increase the breadth of its content production, covering a much larger number of company earnings reports. Experimenting with this software also enabled it to engage in journalistic innovation and thereby remain relevant in a changing news landscape. Interestingly, this has also led to the creation of new jobs and job types, such as the robot journalist.