APB PANELLISTS
6 NEWS & VIEWS
September 2018
You don ’ t get anywhere by sitting still
BY PADDY PAYNE
Two-thirds of Associated Press ’ ( AP ) employees are journalists , in offices straddling the globe , and our mission is to tell the world ’ s stories , from breaking news to investigative reporting . What makes AP truly unique is that it has always been an independent , not-for-profit cooperative not enslaved to a company line or beholden to any government .
But how does an organisation with a 172-year history manage the relentless pace of change ? How does AP keep providing content and services to engage audiences worldwide whether via broadcast , online or social media platforms ?
Even 25 years ago , before the invention of rolling TV news , newspapers were wondering what digital meant and the potential of the World Wide Web remained a mystery to the majority on a ‘ be-bong-be-bong-chrchrchr ’ dial-up . Video footage meant a bike and a tape . Interactive meant there was a phone-in . Big data meant a larger font on your spreadsheet .
Nowadays , appointment television and inky paper serve shrinking audiences but demand for a good story with images and text is greater than ever before . With phones in our pockets , we are all storytellers of course , but credible news outlets must equip their reporters with the resources to be authoritative multi media storytellers , still striving to be first and to be right .
But AP is by its very nature an innovator and has learnt to harness new technologies both to improve its own editorial workflows and to deliver efficiencies to its customers : Artificial intelligence ( AI ). Newsroom in the cloud . Algorithmic journalism . Real-time fact-checking . Social media analytics . Cross-platform planning . Predictive story engagement . Are they just buzzwords ?
From its inception with the pony express to the early adoption of the teleprinter , which transmitted directly to printers over telegraph wires , AP has harnessed the potential of technology . More recently , it pioneered the world ’ s first newsroom computer system . AP ENPS , constantly upgraded and developed , is relied on by over 800 newsrooms globally ( https :// www . ap . org / enps /).
These days , innovation may be delivered with development partners or off our own bat , but let us look at some examples :
■ Newsgathering — Technology has revolutionised the way news providers can cover a story and AP is at the leading edge of this . Technologies such as LiveU ’ s mobile HD live video streaming units provide the flexibility and mobility for AP to get closer to the story than ever before . We have also equipped our journalists with the mobile streaming app
❝ With phones in our pockets , we are all storytellers of course , but credible news outlets must equip their reporters with the resources to be authoritative multimedia storytellers , still striving to be first and to be right .❞
Bambuser , allowing us to cover more stories in real-time video . We now produce over 10,000 hours of live video a year , a number that reflects our customers ’ appetite for live news .
■ Algorithmic journalism and AI — Streamlining workflows , automating mundane tasks , crunching more data , and generating additional output are all the result of the AP ’ s work in algorithmic journalism . You can find out more about that on our website , AP . org ( see ‘ A guide for newsrooms in the age of smart machines ’) ( https :// insights . ap . org / uploads / images / the-future-of-augmented-journalism _ ap-report . pdf ).
■ Google News initiative — The importance of user generated content ( UGC ) to news coverage continues to grow . However , sourcing and verifying UGC takes considerable time and resource with mistakes often leading to misleading news entering the public domain . AP Verify , a cloud-based newsroom tool , automatically collects and assesses the data needed to verify content , saving considerable editorial time and bringing trusted content to the news viewer quicker than ever before . This will be achieved by a marriage of machine learning and video recognition technologies with AP ’ s editorial expertise and UGC verification experience .
■ Automated video transcription — Transcribing recorded interviews and events for use in the video and text news reports can be a laborious and timeconsuming task for any journalist . But partnering with one of the automated transcription providers , Trint , has allowed AP to streamline the process . Before the content is published , producers review and check the transcriptions rather than spend hours creating it . This frees up time to focus on the most urgent stories that need their attention .
■ Automation — AP was the first news agency to automatically turn data into text stories through our Automated Insights partnership , increasing our earnings report output twelvefold . A Stanford University study revealed that this increase in output increased liquidity in the markets , particularly for companies AP had not previously covered before automation . We have now extended this automation to increase our coverage of Minor League Baseball and College Basketball . Automation is often associated with cost cutting , but we have proven at AP that automation can be used to create entirely new revenue streams .
■ Trending stories — The volume of social media content available to a newsroom provides both invaluable sources of content but a significant additional editorial challenge . AP has partnered with and trialled a range of tools to address this , such as Newswhip Spike , to highlight surface trending stories and optimise the reaction time .
■ Content syndication — As a news agency , AP ’ s text , video , photos and digital content are delivered to more than 14,000 newsrooms and some 700 broadcast networks worldwide . Partnering with Newswhip , we developed analytics tools to tell us how AP content is performing , as it is being consumed via third-party sites . The syndication tool matches AP stories against a repository of content , allowing us to track use of AP copy by our customers in real time and analyse how it is driving social engagement .
■ Editorial planning — With the relentless pace of change in how news is produced and consumed , managing people and assignments has never been more important or more difficult . Across its video , text and photo businesses and with offices in over 100 countries , AP knows this more acutely than most . We analysed the problem with a study of coverage planning and resource allocation within our organisation to reach an uncomfortable conclusion . We identified hundreds of hours of duplicated effort between different formats using differ-
Graham Stephens CTO Media City Development , Malaysia
APB PANELLISTS
Goh Kim Soon Senior Vice-President Broadcast Engineering Mediacorp
ent technologies to plan , communicate and report .
We did not find a dedicated editorial planning tool on the market , so developed our own . AP Playbook is currently being tested in our own newsrooms but a more exciting opportunity came along . The more we talked to our customers , the more they affirmed the role AP Playbook could perform for them . As we roll Playbook out , the idea is to help newsrooms increase their output while providing a better way to manage coverage plans , deploy newsroom resources and track costs . AP Playbook is a cloud-hosted platform that facilitates quick and easy access and collaboration , with reporters notified of updates wherever they are and on any device .
I worked for a magazine publisher at the beginning of my career . A more experienced colleague once called out , “ Can you imagine proofing all this before the advent of the fax machine ?”, while grinning wildly at the roll of paper spewing across the office floor . One thing is for sure : every technology mentioned in this article will be superseded but the craft of the storyteller is an enduring one .
As an organisation that strives to be first , to be right and to be authoritative , AP will continue to foster its editorial reputation with a restlessly creative approach to innovation .
Paddy Payne is Director , International Business Development , ENPS , Associated Press
Shad Hashmi
Vice-President , Digital Development , Global Markets & Operations , BBC Worldwide Asia