Micro case studies on AI in media and journalism ranging from financial publications using algorithms to write earnings reports to investigative reporters analyzing large data sets to outlets determining the distribution of news on social media and more.

1. 45 ways AI is being used in Journalism
Check out the book Newsmakers to start
implementing AI in your newsroom!
Share your feedback:
Francesco Marconi
francesco@newlab.com
@fpmarconi

2. News automation
Associated Press
AP uses natural language
generation to automate part of
its financial and sports coverage.
In business news, the newswire
went from covering 300
companies with human writers to
covering over 4,400 companies
with the help of smart machines.
Source: Automated Insights

3. Automated briefings
The Washington Post
Using a tool called Heliograf, reporters
provided the Post’s audience with
automatically generated daily
updates during the 2016 Summer
Olympics.
The updates were delivered through
social media in the form of text alerts
or through Amazon Alexa as voice
updates.
Source: The Washington Post

4. Tracking gender bias
Financial Times
FT developed She Said He Said, a bot
that automatically tracks whether a
quoted source is male or female.
The system uses text analysis
algorithms to track pronouns and first
names to determine the gender of
people mentioned in any given article.
Source: Financial Times

5. Text mining
The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal analyzed the
shareholder letter portion of GE’s
annual report using
natural-language processing libraries.
Trough this approach, journalists
were able to identify and quantify
catchphrases favored by each of the
executives who led the industrial
conglomerate.
Source: WSJ

6. Graphics Automation
STAT News
Health publication STAT News ingest
raw data from public sources and
automatically generates charts and
visuals to distribute on social media.
This approach has been used to
provide readers with regular updates
on the covid-19 pandemic.
Source: STAT News

7. Facial Recognition
The New York Times
Using public video footage of
Bryant Park in NYC and analyzing
it through Amazon’s facial
recognition software, journalists
created an interactive article
discussing the broader
implications of this type of
technology and its potential uses
by governments.
Source: The New York Times

8. Synthetic news anchor
Xinhua
China’s Xinhua News Agency
AI-powered platform Media Brain
analyzes publicly and privately
collected data from social media,
search engines, news feeds.
The agency also created the world’s
first AI news anchor, a digital replica
that resembles a human journalist.
Source: Xinhua

9. Dynamic paywall
The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal’s paywall is
powered by a machine-learning
algorithm that measures reader
activity.
It gives a unique subscription
probability to each reader, which
helps inform how many sample
stories users can access.
Source: The Drum

10. Automated summaries
Bloomberg
Bloomberg launched The Bulletin, a
feature on its mobile app powered by
machine-generated summaries that
provide readers a “sense of completion
in quickly learning the latest news of
the moment, and a comprehensive
summary of the news that goes beyond
a headline.”
Source: Bloomberg Media

11. Event detection
Reuters
Reuters’ platform News Tracer helps
reporters monitor emerging topics
on social media and find relevant
stories more quickly.
In 2015, it revealed social media
activity documenting a shooting in
San Bernardino, California, before
any other news organization.
Source: Thomson Reuters

12. Augmented Fact Checking
The Wall Street Journal
Talk 2020 is a text analysis platform
and search tool that allows the
newsroom to access to 30 years of
public statements made by 14
presidential candidates.
It pulls transcripts from speeches,
rallies, interviews and press
conferences and uses Factiva as its
primary data source.
Source: WSJ

13. Localized news wires
Press Association and RADAR
The Press Association uses reporters
and data and robots for a service
called RADAR that writes local news
stories.
With AI technology, it has already
written 50,000 individual local news
stories in three months.
Source: Newsrewired

14. AI news assistant
Forbes
Forbes developed an AI-powered
content management system
called Bertie to automatically
suggest headlines or images that
should accompany a story.
Source: Forbes

15. Local news automation
Hoodline
This platform works as an automated
local newswire service.
It analyzes data and turns it into
relevant local news stories.
Then it distributes the stories accross
its network of publishers.
Source: Hoodline

16. Emotion detection
Quartz
Journalists at Quartz had a
computer watch a televised debate
between Hillary Clinton and
Donald Trump.
It recognized dominant
emotions measured by facial
expressions for each candidate.
Source: Quartz

17. Recipe recommendation
BuzzFeed
Recommends recipes to users on the
Tasty app using machine learning.
A content based recommendation
system makes personalized
recommendations for users based on
their past views and likes.
Source: BuzzFeed

18. Language analysis
Vox
Th3 online publication run a natural
language processing analysis in
order to compare eight State of the
Union addresses by former President
Obama.
By quantifying the frequency of terms
such as “economy,” “jobs,” and “war,”
the AI-powered assessment identified
the most common themes for each
year.
Source: Vox

19. High school sports Automation
Richland Source
This digital news outlet in Mansfield,
Ohio, is automating articles from the
results of Ohio high schools’ sporting
events.
It built the tool Lede AI in 2018 with
Abundat, an artificial intelligence
company.
Source: Nieman Lab

20. Voice-over
BBC
The BBC has developed one such tool,
called ALTO, which uses
text-to-speech technology to provide
voice-over tracks for video content in
multiple languages.
It processes the video content into a
transcript. The journalist then uses
speech technology to automatically
create a synthetic voice in a different
language.
Source: BBC News Labs

21. AI-powered investigations
BuzzFeed News
In a 2017, BuzzFeed News
published a story about spy
planes after training a
machine-learning model to
look for aircrafts with flight
patterns similar to those
operated by the Department of
Homeland Security and the FBI.
Source: BuzzFeed News

22. Network analysis
El País
The Spanish newspaper used
the tool Graphext for data
science analysis.
It leveraged it to map
relationships between
politicians and the media, by
analyzing hundreds of social
media accounts.
Source: El País

23. Personalized news
The Times
It has an AI-powered tool called JAMES,
which stands for Journey Automated
Messaging for Higher Engagement
through Self-Learning.
It acts as a digital butler, using data to
get to know the habits, interests, and
preferences of readers.
Source: journalism.co.uk

24. Video annotation
Sky News
Sky News uses AI for facial
recognition, subtitling automation
and datasets.
An example is the piece “Who’s who”: In
2018, Sky News used AI facial
recognition technology to spot and
identify the guests arriving at the UK
Royal Wedding.
Source: journalism.co.uk

25. Automated election results
BBC
BBC News will use “semi-automated
journalism” in its election coverage in
2019 for the first time.
It will also use a Twitter bot
(@bbcelection) to automatically tweet
out the result for all of the 650 UK
constituency.
Source: Press Gazette

26. Digital replica
Thai PBS
This year, Thai PBS also presented its
first AI journalist.
The digital replica mimics the voice,
body movements, and other
personal characteristics of the
leading anchor of the network.
Source: JournalismAI

27. Voice assistant
BBC
BBD is also planning to launch a
digital voice assistant in 2020.
It’s being designed to work on all smart
speakers, TVs and mobiles.
Source: BBC

28. Document mining
ICIJ
The International Consortium of
Investigative Journalists uses an
AI-powered tool to automatically
recognize and index text documents
by recognizing entities (people, places,
dates etc.) within content.
This was used to make sense of 13.4
million confidential documents relating
to offshore investments for the
series—“Paradise Papers: Secrets of the
Global Elite.”
Source: ICIJ

29. Headline optimization
MSN.com
In 2016, Microsoft used a type of
reinforcement learning called
contextual bandits to select optimal
headlines for MSN.com, improving
click-through rates by 25 percent.
This system functions as a more
sophisticated form of A/B testing.
Source: Microsoft

30. Sensor data
South Florida Sun Sentinel
The South Florida Sun Sentinel
collected data through GPS
sensors to investigate speeding
police officers, which led to a
series awarded a Pulitzer Prize
for Public Service in 2013.
Source: South Florida Sun Sentinel

31. Machine learning investigations
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Using machine learning, the Atlanta
Journal-Constitution uncovered sex
abuse by doctors, as recounted in a
series of 2016 stories on how physicians
were able to keep their licenses after
being disciplined.
Source: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

32. Audio mining
The Capital Times
The Capital Times newspaper in
Madison, Wisconsin, leveraged an audio
recording device developed by Cortico
to collect conversations from small
group meetings.
The device is connected to an online
platform that identifies recurring
themes, helping reporters surface
unique perspectives from local
communities.
Source: The Capital Times

33. Report automation
Patch
In 2018, it began incorporating artificial
intelligence into its workflow and
content management system to
automate weather and school closure
reports.
Its goal is to craft and scale articles
that don't need further analysis. Patch
is publishing 3,000 pieces a week with
this technology.
Source: Ad Age

34. Useful tools and platforms

35. Dataminr
This platform detects the earliest
signals of high-impact events and
emerging risks.
Radio France used it to detect
outliers in social media
conversations. That gave the French
news organization a head start
covering the 2016 bombing of the
Brussels airport and the terrorist
attack in Nice.
Source: Dataminr

36. Narrativa
The natural language generation
company is able to create 18,000
distinct soccer news articles for
different leagues and teams, every
week, in English, Spanish, and Arabic.
These stories are then published by
news portals such as MSN.com and El
Confidencial.
Source: Narrativa

37. True Anthem
Media organizations including
Reuters, the Chicago Tribune, Hearst,
and CBS Interactive deploy
AI-powered content distribution
platform TrueAnthem to determine
what stories should be
recirculated and when they should
be posted across social media
platforms.
Source: True Anthem

38. Wibbitz
This online tool recognizes
visual elements in photos and
videos and automatically
matches them with a text
script that has been previously
generated through natural
language processing.
Source: Wibbitz

39. NewsWhip
This tool mines social media and
runs sophisticated analysis of news
coverage.
It can monitor the public’s curiosity
about specific topics, then deliver that
information to reporters via alerts and
online dashboards.
Source: Newswhip

40. Synthesia
This startup provides AI-driven video
production.
Its ENACT platform can generate new,
professionally looking video without
the need for any cameras or
hardware.
It also enables translation into any
language.
Source: Synthesia

41. Deeptrace
This startup is building “the antivirus
for deepfakes” using deep learning
technologies that detect synthetic or
altered audiovisual media.
It alerts customers when detects
manipulated media and provides
detailed analytics.
Source: Deeptrace

42. SAM Desk
SAM is a monitoring tool that delivers
speedy alerts and situational
awareness.
It analyzes social media updates
and detects incidents or disruptions
around the world.
Source: Samdesk

43. Trint
This software allows journalists to
upload video or audio files and uses
speech-to-text to automatically
transcribe interviews or caption
video.
It also provides editable transcripts
that users can export.
Source: Trint

44. Vidrovr
A platform that leverages computer
vision to help media companies and
newsrooms to automatically tag and
index video content.
This is particularly relevant when
searching through video archives and
producing visual content to be
distributed across platforms.
Source: Amper Music

45. Amper Music
Allows journalists and content
producers to automatically compose
custom soundtracks that can be
used in documentaries and podcasts.
Source: Amper Music

46. Agolo
The company uses natural language
processing to create summaries
from information in real-time.
It is able to analyze multiple
documents and generate a concise
overview of the subject.
Source: Agolo

47. Share your feedback:
Francesco Marconi
francesco@newlab.com
@fpmarconi
Check out the book Newsmakers to start
implementing AI in your newsroom!