Algorithms, editor’s intuition:the hit & miss of content selection

This is the weekend edition of TheMarioBlog and will be updated as needed. The next blog post is Monday, February 24.

I came to this article with much interest, not only because I am fascinated by the role that Artificial Intelligence (AI) plays in how more newsrooms are selecting content that is based on what readers want, but because I had an interesting dinner conversation with my son-in-law, Dan, last weekend.

Dan likes to challenge me, especially when it comes to questions dealing with politics and the media’s coverage of it. We do our tug of war back and forth, then smile, do a toast, and continue to talk about my grandchildren and whatever he is planting next in his splendid vegetable garden. In this occasion Dan had a question that made me think:

“Why is it that on so many stories, I read the same topic in The New York Times, the see it in Fox News and perhaps NBC, and there are different takes on it. How much of this is opinion? Who decides what stories to play up or down?”

Oh, Dan, that is the age old question of what we journalists call agenda setting, a topic that has fascinated and befuddle journalists and news consumers through the ages. Books are written on the subject. Many dinner conversations end up with discussions of why a certain publication picked a certain story for its lead, while another one buried the same story somewhere.

As long as there is a human involved, agenda setting for content will be plagued with emotions, special interests, a news brand’s management take on what is important for its audience. This, in my view, won’t change.

But, alas, we now have AI, which can more scientifically point us in the direction of what our audiences crave, so that we give it to them.

How the audience sees it

So, the question may be? How good are we humans at coming up with content selection that is a crowd pleaser?

This article highlighted a couple of points worth mentioning:

The newsroom is obviously not producing the content that the algorithm says the audience would like to read.
In the UK, only around one third of the audience thinks that the media pick the right subjects and only about half thinks that the media help them to understand the news.

Luckily, across countries, a bit more than half of the audience think that media keeps them updated

But the author of the article also concludes that:

So, we have to conclude that professional intuition in the newsroom is far from perfect. What if a machine could help? This question is still a taboo in many newsrooms. The immediate response is often that no machine can take into account all the aspects and contexts of news. That the audience wants journalists to be responsible for choosing what to write, and how, and which pieces to promote.

News determinants

Let’s hear it for the human element in the selection of content. I agree that no AI can ever replace what a human can do. I also feel that perhaps we need to pay more attention to those old news determinants of another era that can help us make better choices. For those who may not remember what those are:

Consequence—how many people are affected from an event. The greater magnitude means highly valued news as it effects higher number of people

Proximity—geographic and psychological.

Timeliness—nearness in time

Human Interest—Especially if conflict takes place, chances are news follows. Stories such as elections, sports, man vs. man conflict news .

Personalities—News about important personalities like any celebrity is valued and this factor determines news.

So what? —Why should this story be published?

I am definitely sending a link to this blog post to my son-in-law Dan to help him understand the challenge that editors face daily when making story selections. There is a science to it, via AI, but no matter how much progress we make with the inclusion of algorithms in our story selection process (which I applaud, by the way), as long as there is a human involved chances are the selections are going to be smarter—-but not likely to please all, including my dear son-in-law.

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