When I went to the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in the late 80s, they still used manual typewriters for the intro to journalism class. Today, my alma mater appears to be at the forefront of exploring the intersection of journalism and technology.
Three Medill graduate journalism students and a computer science student have created a program called StatsMonkey that automatically generates sports stories based on box scores and other raw game data.
It was originally developed as a way to help cover college baseball, for which there are plenty of fans, but a limited number of scribes to report on the games. Here’s the start of one story: “Northwestern held off a late comeback bid by Georgetown to defeat the Hoyas 5-3 Friday. Trevor Stevens led the Wildcats with two hits and one run scored…” Not bad, for a computer.
Is StatsMonkey good enough to take a reporter’s job? Not likely. Its talents are limited. It can’t ask the coach a question, interview players, or explore the story lines behind the box scores. But it can produce a tidy summary of a game that probably wouldn’t have been covered at all.
StatsMonkey was developed by Nicholas Allen, Tian Huang, John Templon and computer science student Thu Cung. Read more at http://www.medill.northwestern.edu/innovation/page.aspx?id=134675
John: This is interesting. Writing themselves out of jobs.
I didn’t realize you are a Medillian. I earned my master’s degree at Medill in 1987. I guess our paths did not cross in front of Fisk!
Hi, Allison. Thanks for the comment. Yes, earned my MSJ at Medill in ’89. Great program.