AP blows blog opportunity using bots to report baseball
The Associated Press blew a huge opportunity to use baseball bloggers by deciding to use bots to report minor league baseball games.
As Ben Mullin (@benmullin), the managing editor of Poynter reported, as a sign of “innovation,” the AP will use an automated writing service to cover more than 10,000 minor league baseball games annually.
They’ll produce the stories using technology from Automated Insights which will turn data from MLB Advanced Media, the official stat-keeper of the minor leagues, into “natural language.” While the AP covered only some games beginning in 2006, they’ll now produce “stories” for all Triple-A, Double-A and Class A games. That’s 142 MLB-affiliated teams in 13 leagues.
Mullin reports the stories, in addition to being on the AP feed, will run on MiLB.com, the official website of Minor League Baseball, and the sites of the individual teams.
Why wouldn’t the AP use a network of local bloggers covering teams before using bots to provide coverage of minor league baseball games? It’s a shame to blow such an opportunity.
Rather than machines to “create coverage,” why not use local passionate fans to blog the games? The nuances, history, and quirks of the game and players would be picked up. That’s what baseball fans and purists are after.
Imagine going to college or having an eight to five job and having an AP press pass to report your town’s minor league games from the press box. It’s the stuff dreams are made of for an awful lot of people.
If one person can’t cover all the games, divide ‘me up. There’s more than one raving baseball fan that would love to cover their team.
We’d have a nation of minor league bloggers. Who wouldn’t blog for an AP sports network. We grew up hearing about the AP everyday. The AP stil has a brand.
The bloggers would use not only a blog, but also Twitter, Facebook and Instagram throughout the game. Their social sharing would spread across town and across the country to fans who grew up following their local team.
Just like fans follow announcers, reporters and bloggers (think SB Nation) today, fans would follow their team’s blogger.
As stories move across the net socially, minor league baseball posts from bloggers known and trusted would flow across Twitter and Facebook. How do you build trust in a bot and get your stories to spread socially?
Gwynne Monahan (@econwriter5), a writer for legal and other publications shared over on Facebook that the AP’s philosophy on automated reporting, as discussed at last year’s SXSW, is to produce more stories in a fraction of the time. The logic being that it frees up time for reporters to pursue more interesting stories.
To me, the AP, which has a record of not understanding blogging, social media and the like, blew a big a opportunity. For whatever reason, news organizations don’t under social media and cannot see the opportunities.
It’s a shame. For in the next five to seven years, the AP will have died and nation of minor league baseball bloggers will be running – formally or informally.