Staff | Protecmedia
The current media landscape is challenging, to say the least. The emergence of fake news, new players and disruptive technologies are forcing both large groups and independent newspapers to adapt very quickly and change the way they work.
Newsroom 3.0 has to meet the needs of consumers who already demand "real-time" information as bloggers and influencers do, but also require content formats that are easy to digest while providing deep and verified information that match their interests.
To reach these goals, media companies can take advantage of various technological advances. At Protecmedia, we are focusing our efforts in three fundamental areas: process automation, removal of repetitive tasks and the search for news-oriented processes. To achieve this, the use of AI-based technologies is paramount.
The last edition of JournalismAI congress, bore witness that — what a few years before could have seemed sci-fi — is today a reality and a "must-have" on the purchase list of many media outlets worldwide.
Presently, there is a great diversity of tools in the market that could help a newsroom 3.0 significantly reduce the time spent on minor tasks, leaving room for creativity and intuition to create a better product. AI-driven technologies have made it much easier to deal with tasks such as:
- Creating customized sites that can be easily optimized via A/B testing: It is no longer enough to offer good information; the user demands a personalized experience. With big data and well-trained AIs, we are able to show each user personalized content based on their own interests. In addition, with A/B testing, we will be able to automatically select which combinations of headline, subtitle and image work best for each user. These tools are essential for maintaining readers' interest and increasing traffic.
- Running video analysis automatically: It is increasingly common for videos to become the core of news. A newsroom 3.0 must be equipped with tools that allow them to automate the extraction of key data from these videos, to identify relevant tags and have a good content analysis.
Solutions like AIVA "Artificial Intelligence Video Analysis," examine videos and photos through Artificial Intelligence; consequently, searching for videos or photographs in your archives becomes an easy task for anyone taking just a few seconds.
- Intelligent DAM: Most newsrooms constantly have thousands of different files in use — PDF, Word, Excel, photographs, videos, audio, etc. Managing these archives takes time and money that could be used more effectively for other tasks. An AI-based DAM makes it easier for newsrooms to classify, search and find any files with its automation capabilities.
Furthermore, some legacy media have found an extra source of revenue in their archives. They are monetizing their historical archive with e-commerce solutions to suit the request of other media companies, documentary producers or nostalgic readers.
- Use Speech to Text for video or audio interviews: The rise of podcasts has made this tool essential (there have always been very long interviews that need to be transcribed), and it allows us to automatically transcribe all the content of an audio file to a text file. This way, all the audio content will be available and accessible to the entire editorial team at all times, perfectly indexed.
- Take advantage of layout Design Assistants: Printed newspapers still enjoy a greater "prestige," but they are costly to produce. Layout design assistants are in demand, as they have become the most efficient connection between the printed and digital worlds. Possibly the most popular of these tools is AIDA, "Artificial Intelligence Design Assistant," a technology that allows newspapers to automate the layout of printed publications from what has already been published on the web. This technology helps layout designers be more creative and it also helps journalists facing tight print deadlines. The struggle to get last-minute information ready to print is history now.
In this new era of AI-driven solutions, these tools are not exclusive to big media groups, but are available for newsmakers of all sizes. In many cases, the smaller media outlets can be as effective and productive in using these new technologies as the big media groups. The democratization of the use of these technologies in newsrooms 3.0 is allowing accurate and verified information to go further every day.
About Protecmedia:
Protecmedia is a Spanish company specializing in software development for media. It has more than 40 years of international experience in over 26 countries around the world. It delivers integrated solutions that cover editorial, audience and advertising processes. More information at: www.protecmedia.com
