At Manchester Evening News we love to innovate and try something different.
Like many media organizations, we’ve been experimenting with AI to see if we can give our users a richer experience around the subject matter they want to read. We are now starting to publish a small amount of content using these new technologies.
It’s not a radical move for us. During the pandemic, we produced daily COVID-19 statistics for each borough of Greater Manchester with the help of ‘robots’ that turn source data into articles. It was recognized in the Digital Initiative of the Year category at the Editors’ Association Awards. Most recently, we experimented with AI-generated quizzes.
Click this link to join our WhatsApp Top Stories and Breaking News Group
Storytelling is very important to us and we are always looking for new ways to reach our readers. We hope this trial will teach us a lot about how AI technology can help journalists in their daily work. We also want to know more about what our readers want to read (and what they don’t want to read).
But we have clear boundaries. From using AI to explore spreadsheets and data, to using AI to speed up editorial investigations, every experiment is always overseen by journalists. I will always declare in the article where I used AI tools.
We will judge the results of these experiments under the leadership of journalists. Our Court’s purpose is to help journalists do their job and serve their audience in the most effective way possible.
As always, honest feedback from our readers is essential and welcome.
In the meantime, our journalists continue to tell important stories.
Sarah Lester
Manchester Evening News Editor
Please contact sarah.lester@reachplc.com.
Some of the leading information from last week:
