Online reporters beware - an American University has created a 'virtual journalist' that uses the latest algorithms and artificial intelligence techniques to process and write information.

Still at an experimental stage, the 'Columbia Newsblaster' rewrites reports from 13 sources, including Yahoo, ABCNews, CNN, Reuters, Los Angeles Times, CBS News, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Virtual New York, Washington Post, Wired, and USA Today.

Its creators at Columbia University's Department of Computer Science claim it will never replace human writers, as they have the ability to interpret and analyse information. Human journalists make connections between facts and between events or stories that can add context to a current report.

However, when it comes to scanning hundreds of articles from online newspapers and rewriting them to news format - something many online journalists already spend much of their time doing - Newsblaster is highly effective.

The computer does not simply lift sentences to use as the summary. Instead, it uses natural language processing techniques to read what is written in published news reports.

It interprets the importance of different facts, reflecting where a fact is mentioned in the reports, how often it is repeated across stories dealing with the same event or subject, and the news value of those individual facts: such as how many were killed or how much property damage occurred.

Its creators claim Newsblaster is a tool for journalists, executives or even average news consumers to help them manage in an age of information overload.

John V. Pavlik, contributing editor at Online Journalism Review, tested Newsblaster for himself. "Reading over the summaries at the Newsblaster site, and comparing what it has written with the stories its summaries are based on, it appears to be pretty accurate," he said.

Meanwhile Dan Dubno, producer and technologist for CBS News, said he was concerned that such technology could dull the 'editorial edge' a reporter or editor brings to covering a story.

See also:
ojr.usc.edu/content/story.cfm?request=690
www.cs.columbia.edu/nlp/newsblaster/

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