The Atlantic piece is light on details, but the Sunlight Foundation has a blog post describing the technology used for text pattern matching, titled "Churnalism US: the Nuts and Bolts" (http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2013/04/23/churnalism-tec...). They've released the core matching code, called SuperFastMatch, as free software (https://github.com/mediastandardstrust/superfastmatch).
Is It Journalism, or Just a Repackaged Press Release? Here's a Tool to Help
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Re: Is It Journalism, or Just a Repackaged Press Release? Here's a Tool to Help
#52Depending on the release and the article, I'm not convinced that rewriting or lifting words from a press release is always a bad thing. Is it possible to write a story about the latest Consumer Price Index without it being substantially based on this press release http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cpi.pdf ? Is it possible to write about a newly announced iPhone without lifting data from Apple PR events or releases?…
> Is it possible to write about a newly announced iPhone without lifting data from Apple PR events or releases? No, but writing about the newly announced iPhone shouldn't really be called journalism.
Why not? So is a press release never news?
Re: Is It Journalism, or Just a Repackaged Press Release? Here's a Tool to Help
#53This is really awesome. It's definitely a step in the right direction, anyway. If the tool really catches on, though, there's an easy loophole that spammers have been using to trick Google for the last ten years. You simply load the content into a "spinner" and have it generate synonyms. Articles for human consumption used to require manual editing, but the programs are getting better. Spammers have been known to use…
Before a journalist takes the time to load a press release into a "spinner" maybe they'll just go ahead and rewrite in their own words.
Re: Is It Journalism, or Just a Repackaged Press Release? Here's a Tool to Help
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
I never quite published a press release verbatim in all the news stories I have written[1], but sometimes the information density of a press release is so low as to make a rewrite look like a copy anyway. [1] https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site:trustedreviews.com+hu...
I don't think there is a problem with press releases, as long as journalists acknowledge them for what they are: press releases. It's fine imho for a newspaper to reproduce a press releases verbatim, if it makes it clear to the reader that no post-processing has been done. What is not ok is to trick the reader into believing that a piece of information has received adequate treatment, when it really hasn't. There's a…
The only way it should be acceptable is if the journalist writes "the company said X but they stand to make money off of it and I have not verified it."
Re: Is It Journalism, or Just a Repackaged Press Release? Here's a Tool to Help
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Aren't good PR people supposed to "sell" their story directly to a "journalist", without an intermediate publicly available press release?" That would require that the "journalist" pay attention and not just directly look through their pile of releases for a "story". News departments are lazy and don't want to pay for real news, they want it spoon-fed.
It's spoon-feeding I'm describing. It's just targeted, one-to-one spoon feeding instead of spray-and-pray press releases. It is way easier for a journalist to go to lunch, accept flattery for his sharp style and leadership in his field, and then walk home and copy-paste the text handed to him, than sift through the same pile of press releases that every other journalist in the industry is also sifting through.
>News departments are lazy and don't want to pay for real news
Neither do users.
Re: Is It Journalism, or Just a Repackaged Press Release? Here's a Tool to Help
#56As a former PR person I can tell you that this ap is AWESOME. the general public has no idea how much of their "news" is actually just corporate created "infomercials" I don't even mean to sound like a conspiracy theorist- but it is truly shocking when as an intern I would write press releases and then later that night hear my exact words said on the evening news. This is especially true of newspapers who are trying…
I'll agree to "AWESOME" but won't give you "game changer."
The only way this will be a game changer is if we the audience hold media accountable for its content. I feel like if that was in the cards, there is plenty of readily available evidence to bolster claims of poor quality.
Moreover, is not the first app of this nature. Take the human-powered Newstrust.net (now run by Poyter I believe), which has crafted quantitive measures of "journalistic quality." It was another "awesome" model - but it's not widely used. No tool can hold news organizations accountable when its readers do not.
Re: Is It Journalism, or Just a Repackaged Press Release? Here's a Tool to Help
#57Journalism isn't supposed to be fiction. The information comes from some place other than the journalist's mind, and often that information originates in a press release, though that absolutely should not be the end of a journalist's research.
Still I don't understand why journalists (including some of the ones I have hired as freelancers) are willing to regurgitate a press release and leave it at that. Some even plagiarize releases and put their bylines on the story, which is beyond shady. But beginning and ending with a press release is lazy. Sometimes more information just isn't available. Sometimes.
I cover technology. There is no technology that isn't announced in a press release. It's just the way the industry is. It's either a press release or leaked information that will appear in a press release later anyway.
But press releases, as someone here mentioned, are often lacking in details. They're also often just plain inaccurate. It is a very rare PR person who has any grasp of technology beyond Twitter and Microsoft Office.
Why do people write stories based exclusively on a press release instead of getting hold of the software or hardware, reading spec sheets, reading manuals or at least visiting the product information page online?
You write a story about a new projector. What ports does it have? Those aren't in the press release, but they're easily accessible. Throw ratio? Weight and dimensions? Lens options? Throw distance? All of those pieces of information are important to your readers and can easily be learned by looking outside the press release. So why skimp when your audience is counting on you?
Now, all of that said, I think the premise of this tool is a joke. Google works fine when I want to find out if my writers are plagiarizing verbatim, which I have caught some doing. But other than that, every single piece of journalism is based on information obtained from somewhere, whether it's a press release in your mailbox or a press conference in the White House, whether it's a whistle blower meeting you in secret or a piece of damning evidence you found in a dumpster. It all comes from somewhere.
Re: Is It Journalism, or Just a Repackaged Press Release? Here's a Tool to Help
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think there is a problem with press releases, as long as journalists acknowledge them for what they are: press releases. It's fine imho for a newspaper to reproduce a press releases verbatim, if it makes it clear to the reader that no post-processing has been done. What is not ok is to trick the reader into believing that a piece of information has received adequate treatment, when it really hasn't. There's a…
The only way it should be acceptable is if the journalist writes "the company said X but they stand to make money off of it and I have not verified it."
I used to think that, until I read this:
http://www.zerohedge.com/content/zero-hedge-conflictsfull-di...
In particular:
| The reality is, critical readers should read analytic
| posts and the rest of Zero Hedge* with the blanket
| assumption that the author is totally "conflicted."
| (Phrased more logically, that the author stands to
| benefit from being right--imagine that).
Re: Is It Journalism, or Just a Repackaged Press Release? Here's a Tool to Help
#59Aren't good PR people supposed to "sell" their story directly to a "journalist", without an intermediate publicly available press release? Will this tool find those? Also, there's a certain irony in that this story itself almost certainly is "planted" PR.
Ditto on the irony. You'd think that with their stated mission, they would be more aware of the way they get publicity themselves. And if they choose to use the exact same methods they claim to fight, they would at least call themselves out and say "yeah, we're doing it too, but we're a non-profit/have cool software/helping others."
Re: Is It Journalism, or Just a Repackaged Press Release? Here's a Tool to Help
#60Today I will mostly be: sketching out how to hook my URL catching bot to the Readability API for extracting article text and then to the Churnalism API for finding what press releases the BBC* have put lipstick on this time.
* other news-gathering organisations are available.