Data Journalism The ‘In-Thing’, But Is It Real Journalism?

TTT New Delhi– The start of robot / data acquired and presented journalism signals the end of risk-taking, on the spot journalism, reporting battles and wars, local gang-murders, fires and the like.

In the coming years, gone will be the days when journalists will require personal security details, or the opportunity to ’embed’ in the field with troops headed into battle.

Instead, high-risk zones will be covered  by hi-tech drones, and news-stories will be padded by data that will, in all likelihood, soon be easier to acquire, and possibly more accurate than ever before without ever having to break a sweat. 

And in just the next few months or so the very complexion of daily or periodical editorials will be changed completely after the new tool, Journalist Studio (JS), is gradually adopted by the editorial desks of print, broadcast and online journalism outlets.

The task of copy-editors and feature-writers will be made even easier as JS comes embedded with rapid chart and graph generating functions.

Journalist Studio, was launched by Google with the claims that it is an advanced technological system inside which a ‘star-tool’ named Pinpoint features to let ‘journalists’ analyze and explore a collection of documents once access permission is given. 

The Washington Post used JS in a piece on America’s opioid pandemic. 

The tool is supported in six languages besides English; French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese and Spanish.

Earlier, Adobe Inc also announced that it had developed a series of artificial intelligence tools, working them into its digital marketing software with the aim of helping companies sharpen their marketing campaigns.

Ali Bohra, director of strategy and product marketing for intelligence services at Adobe, said in an interview with western media that Adobe has placed the technologies directly inside the marketing systems, reducing the need to export data.

The BBC has already been using a tool of artificial intelligence, Juicer, which enables tagging of news content, while the Associated Press has for two years been utilizing AI tools. 

India is still at the testing stage as far as journalism is concerned, although some enthusiasts are developing private channels which will be run by AI.

Programming today is being done in a way that any major news happening anywhere in the world can now be on-air within four minutes of its occurrence – but is this a form of ‘journalism‘ we want to see making headway? 

Is this even journalism?