Did a Human or a Computer Write This?

Leaving aside the gimmicks in some of these examples, it is a fact that when you need to communicate quantitative information machine generated text is a great solution. Our company builds analytics and dashboards for fund managers and traders (the people who manage most pension funds). Infographics and charts only go so far; eventually, the user has to extract the key information, or communicate it with a colleague, which means verbalizing.

[ShowHN:] We built our report generation system (in Haskell) that can create a custom report for every portfolio or market index, and can be tuned to the user's risk profile. We've released a public version that anyone can use for free that covers most global indices and sectors:

https://apps.otastech.com/morningreport?listtype=marketindex...

In our experience, the turns of phrase that initially give the impression that the text has been written by a human quite quickly become irritating noise. Our users need to absorb information quickly and accurately, and comprehension is aided by adhering to a standard structure and avoiding figurative language.

Your second version is too long and not nearly as tweetable. The automatic A/B tester will quickly pick up on that and train the story generator.

Journalism is dying because small-ads disappeared. The masses never paid for quality journalism.

Classified advertising revenue decline: http://www.journalism.org/media-indicators/newspaper-classif...

With a better chart and commentary: http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-newspapers-c...

Expanded for all advertising revenue: https://gigaom.com/2013/04/11/two-charts-that-tell-you-every...

I respect your contrarian tendency, and have only anecdotal evidence to offer.

I spent about 10 years abroad as a foreign correspondent and editor for some major publications. During that time, I saw the foreign bureaux of most major US news organizations eviscerated. Staff was chopped, layoffs every year, offices consolidated, many newspapers simply gave up on covering foreign news with people on the ground. That was a really disappointing time.

There's always been a lot of trash in journalism. And there's still a lot of high-quality stuff.

But as the news changes, there's a structural problem is measuring how good it is.

Only newsmakers (the people behind the closed doors negotiating and making decisions) know what's really going on. Only they possess the test set to measure the reporting against. And unless there's an investigative reporter who has built relationships with them and convinces them to talk, the public will never know what actually happened, or know what public figures are hiding.

The substitute for great investigative reporting isn't necessarily bad journalism. It's usually silence. How do you measure that? How do you know that no one wrote a story about something that you weren't conscious of? You don't. You're simply unaware. And that makes the parasitic special interests undermining the general welfare of this country and every other incredibly happy.

There's a reason why investigative reporting is the first to fall: It's incredibly costly in terms of time, money, effort and even social relationships.

News organizations and publishers put their reputations and networks on the line every time they blow the lid off a huge story. Reporters work for months cultivating sources' trust and learning where to look for and understand obscure documents. This kind of reporting doesn't make sense now that ad dollars have moved to Google. It doesn't have a place at Buzzfeed or Upworthy, because it's a huge risk and doesn't necessarily drive traffic, even if it impacts policy and elections.

Just as a point of reference -

http://www.wired.com/2015/03/disney-magicband/

This is journalism WE should pay for? Looks bought and paid for already...