Will Technology Actually Revolutionize News Gathering

June 18, 2011

One of my for fee columns for July 2011 focuses on AOL Patch.com. One could make the case that Patch.com is one of the efforts underway to revolutionize news.

Information, particularly news, is in one of those “best of times, worst of times” moments. Shocking event follows shocking story the way a ballpark wiener requires a white bread roll.

Some major formats, channels, and companies are failing. The content is not hot or not relevant. The price is too high for the perceived value or the hassle is too great for the payback.

We found Ushahid.com’s “’What Really Happened?’: Using SwiftRiver to Help Confirm Newstips” thought provoking. The story discusses the current failings of news outlets and the increasing efforts to use technological innovations to usher in a new era of reporting. The piece highlights the use of SwiftRiver, described on its site as:

” … a free an open-source suite of tools for managing excessive amounts of real-time data. Our architecture allows users to mashup real-time data from disparate media channels (Twitter, Email, SMS, JSON, XML or RSS/Atom), structures it, then offers methods for using the output.”

Being someone who can easily lose hours poring over articles and posts from a host of media outlets, most of which originate beyond our borders, the drive the author speaks of to rise above the idiocy of modern news media resonated with me. I found this passage somewhat encouraging:

“Can we get a ‘people’s newswire’ based on eyewitness reports of newsworthy events? I believe we can – if we combine the automation of systems like Swiftriver, the data visualization possibilities of tools like Ushahidi, and the insight of trained reporters who can follow up on potential leads.”

We remain open minded. However, will technology replace the traditional approach to identifying a story, researching it, and then putting the write up through a process of nit-picking by colleagues and bosses? We don’t think so, but will it matter to those raised with smartphones and persistent distraction?

Stephen E Arnold, June 18, 2011

Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, the resource for enterprise search information and current news about data fusion

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under News, Search, Text analytics

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.