Journo’s head-to-head against machines

Journalists are often complaining about the rise of user generated content and the utter amateur publishers. But maybe journalists should start focusing on a much more potent threat: The machines.

Yes, content filtering is hot. And even though Digg and del.icio.us have been around for while, new services continue to pop up which put the machines to work at creating the most compelling feed(s) of news suited to your individual taste(s). The race is on. Will man or machine win?

The reason I put this to the forefront is two things that happened over the weekend: An interview I read in a Danish Sunday newspaper and a post on ReadWriteWeb about a new filtering service.

To take the latter first, the story on ReadWriteWeb was about the new personal news filter socialmedian. Basically what it promises to do is to allow you to set yout own filters based on keywords and then let the machines present the news most relevant to you and the network of friends and/or connections you have the opportunity to build around this network.

Think about it for a second. If you’re only into a very specific niche of expertise, you can get a news filter specialized only for this. You can add feeds to the filter, and you can ask the machine to search the web for news sources, articles and blog posts that may be of relevance to it. What you are doing is that you’re essentially filtering out the human editorial function of the equation.

But does that really matter. Not according to Jens Gaardboe, a one time Mr. News anchor on Danish television station , TV 2. In an interview in Berlingske Tidende on Sunday, Gaardboe said that he thinks todays journalism is abysmal. It’s all about being there, on the spot and ready to report. Even if there isn’t anything worth reporting. Just getting out with your publication seems to be the goal.

If this is indeed true, the question is whether journalists are competing on factors where both the public and the machines may be better. If the only goal is to be there and be quick, couldn’t somebody else do that just as well? And wouldn’t the machine pick up the persons post or picture quicker than an editorial lead in a newsroom? Perhaps. Perhaps not. The important thing is that the potential is there.

What journalism critically needs is to define its niche once again. Being quick and present doesn’t cut it anyone, as technology has enabled everybody to do that exact thing. Journalists need to figure out where it is that they contribute with unique value to the whole news equation. Only by doing that will they be able to defend bot ordinary man and machine.