Robo-journalism study

The robo journalism study, while interesting in how it tests academic thinking on journos themselves, falls desperately short of being representative of anything. Sample of 22 journalists. Four from Reuters included three execs who would of course talk up automation. Just ONE is actual financial journo of unknown beat, although seemingly macro focused based on comments cited in full paper.

Really shameful to tar the sheer diversity and complexity and sophistication of Reuters journalism with something so anecdotal, and well, press release-like. 

The discussion also seems largely centred on commoditised data topics which lend themselves to automation but are hardly the focus of contemporary journalists' work at Reuters. I'm all for automation where it works but this study doesn't do anything more than summarise random opinions from a group that comes nowhere close to representing Reuters, "the wires" or journalism at large. ■