At Norwegian regional title Bergens Tidende, local business was long an underreported beat, as reporters' time was focused on investigative journalism rather than breadth of reporting. With the Business bot automating texts about company annual reports, the publisher can suddenly cover all industries. Bonus: the business coverage is a big hit with subscribers.
In summer of 2021, Bergens Tidende went live with automated coverage of the results of all Bergen companies' with a turnover of $300,000 or more. The Business bot turns annual reports (publicly available data in Norway) into easy-to-understand summaries of the company's revenue, profit and profit before tax. The robot also includes information about the number of employees, CEO salary and dividends in the article.
Many subscribers read the business content every day
This business content is a massive success with subscribers and has frequently topped the most read lists since launch, according to Project Lead Jan Stian Vold at BT. "That’s really unheard of when it comes to automated content. Seventy articles have been read by more than 10,000 subscribers, an outstandingly high number for an automated service in a publication the size of BT." The most read article, a story about a traditional roadhouse, reached 40,000 views. About 10,000 subscribers have visited the service daily. (For perspective, BT had 65,000 active digital subscribers daily at the turn of the year.) In total, two million page views were generated from July to December 2021.
The bot covers what staff doesn't have time for
Journalism is changing and a lot of stories that local news titles used to cover don’t get attention. Logical and unavoidable, says Vold, given the reduction in editorial staff in recent years. "The problem is that this leads to reduced content diversity. Automated content is a remedy to fix this, but more than that, it can provide subscribers with a completely unique new depth." During the COVID crisis, BT was able to continuously document how companies in vulnerable industries were doing — thanks to the Business bot. They also uncovered large local companies never mentioned in BT before, among them "several large cash cows."
The new business content is redefining local business journalism
A regional newspaper like BT is usually not staffed for niche journalism and hyperlocal content. The editorial staff tend to choose stories that are interesting and important to as many readers as possible. "This leaves society and readers with blind spots," Stian Vold points out. "The Business bot sheds light on these, which adds substantial value to our subscribers. Subscribers can now read about their favorite neighborhood restaurant, the shop on the corner — in addition to local investigative and explanatory journalism."
The BT business articles come with automatically generated images and graphs showing company results over time.
Interested? There are more publisher cases on the United Robots website:
https://www.unitedrobots.ai/resources/cases
