Much attention has been given to the idea of computer-generated stories and whether or not these stories will supplant stories written by journalists. Technological advancements are now challenging the editing profession. The Sunlight Foundation recently unveiled a tool that detects open-source plagiarism, which scans text and compares it with press releases and Wikipedia entries. It's called Churnalism.
Sites like turnitin.com have been used in the academic arena for some time, but Churnalism might be the first site designed primarily for journalists. If the site locates similar language, a user will receive notification of a detected "churn" that will allow him or her to be able to examine both sources in a juxtaposition.
While I think that the tool can be extremely useful, I find myself hesitant to embrace the site.
"Discover the journalism you can trust and what you should question" - the site's tagline - concerns me. I might be an old-school reporter, but I think that if newsrooms make a major transition to use these sorts of sites, then the work of a journalist will slowly become obsolete.
Two years at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism have taught me that at the very heart of a journalists' role is to question everything. If we suddenly put all of our faith into a site so that it can tell us what to question, then what are we really doing?
Then again, I bet someone like me was questioning Spell Check when it first arrived on the scene, wondering if it would make journalists lazy by placing complete trust in a proofreading application.
I agree that the idea of computer generated stories is a little scary.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/forbes-among-30-clients-using-computer-generated-stories-instead-of-writers_b47243
However,I feel like this site, Churnalism is great idea. I think it is similar to spell check. It will allow copy editors to find plagiarism faster just as spell check helps find spelling mistakes faster. It will never be the final say because nothing can replace the understanding of a human.
There will never be the perfect algorithm in a computer program that can catch other types of plagiarism, such as the plagiarism of ideas. The way this program is set up it finds exact phrases that match but a computer can not understand when writers don't attribute exclusive information from the original source or the first news organization that reported the news.
I don't think that this site will necessary steal jobs away from copy editors whose positions are already disappearing. Instead, I feel like this will make journalists a feel a little more accountable because it will be that much easier for editors to find plagiarism.
The fact that computer scientists have developed algorithms for programs that enables them to writes stories, does scare me. I am currently taking a class on how to write business stories and the link above has Forbes business story written by a computer. What does this new technology mean for the semester I've spent learning how to do that? How about the money I've spent on that bit of education?
As journalism has advanced, even since we've been in college, the biggest change I've seen is the speed of things. Just in the three years I've been in College Park, the speed at which the public gets access to news has grown immensely. I think one of the best example of this were the Boston Bombings. I was able to get news and information on social media and Twitter links that were five, even 10 minutes ahead of what CNN of MSNBC was putting up on screen. Of course, in a world where news is coming non-stop and at a breakneck pace, sites like this are great for separating the true from the false.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I'm a big fan of this website. I don't really see the downside. With this sort of website, news organizations will easily be able to find out if their reporters are plagiarizing or taking information from press releases, which has become a MAJOR problem, especially as journalism seems to have adopted an attitude of "Get the news out as quick as you can, no matter what." I don't see the site as stealing away any jobs, either. I think it's simply a way for the public to serve as a watchdog over the media. If the media isn't accurately telling news and instead just publishing press releases, the public deserves to know, and this will only help that.
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