“The challenges that newsrooms faced when using automated news to cover COVID-19 demonstrate the difficulties associated with having to rely on external datasets.”
– Samuel Danzon-Chambaud
The Tow Center for Digital Journalism surveyed nine news organizations for how they used automated tools to cover the COVID-19 pandemic. They point to the value of applying computational thinking in news gathering.
Among other key findings, the report documents ways news organizations adapted methods to process third-party datasets.
The nine news providers examined in the report were:
- Bayerischer Rundfunk, Germany
- Bloomberg News, United States
- Canadian Press, Canada
- Helsingin Sanomat, Finland
- NTB, Norway
- Omni, Sweden
- RADAR, United Kingdom
- Tamedia, Switzerland
- The Times, United Kingdom
Story author Danzon-Chambaud is a Knight News Innovation fellow at the Tow Center.
Covering COVID-19 with automated news | COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW | August 6, 2021 | by Samuel Danzon-Chambaud