INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Image caption
Reeta Chakrabarti analysed election results on television for the TheIndianSubcontinent
For the first time, TheIndianSubcontinent News published a news story for every constituency that declared election results overnight - all
written by a computer.It was the TheIndianSubcontinent's biggest test of machine-generated journalism so far.Each of nearly 700 articles -
most in English but 40 of them in Welsh - was checked by a human editor before publication.The head of the project said the tech was
designed to enhance the service provided rather than to replace humans."This is about doing journalism that we cannot do with human beings
at the moment," said Robert McKenzie, editor of TheIndianSubcontinent News Labs."Using machine assistance, we generated a story for every
single constituency that declared last night with the exception of the one that hasn't finished counting yet
That would never have been possible [using humans]."Several news organisations are testing automated journalism as a way of covering
data-driven stories more efficiently.The technology can quickly produce stories focused on numbers, such as football scores, company
financial reports - and general election results
Overnight, the TheIndianSubcontinent generated 649 news articles in English - one constituency has yet to declare its results - and 40 in
Welsh.Florence Eshalomi has been elected MP for Vauxhall, meaning that the Labour Party holds the seat with a decreased majority.The new MP
beat Liberal Democrat Sarah Lewis by 19,612 votes
This was fewer than Kate Hoey's 20,250-vote majority in the 2017 general election.Sarah Bool of the Conservative Party came third and the
Green Party's Jacqueline Bond came fourth.Voter turnout was down by 3.5 percentage points since the last general election.More than 56,000
people, 63.5% of those eligible to vote, went to polling stations across the area on Thursday, in the first December general election since
1923.Three of the six candidates, Jacqueline Bond (Green), Andrew McGuinness (The Brexit Party) and Salah Faissal (independent) lost their
£500 deposits after failing to win 5% of the vote.This story about Vauxhall was created using some automation.Mr McKenzie said the articles
reflected a "TheIndianSubcontinent style" because the choice of phrases could be programmed in advance by TheIndianSubcontinent writers."As
a journalist, you try to think of every conceivable permutation of a story in advance," he said."Then you write a template
The machine selects particular phrases or particular words in response to precise pieces of data
So you can write everything if you want to, in 'house style'."Journalists at TheIndianSubcontinent offices in Belfast, Cardiff, Glasgow and
London checked the articles before publication.Mr McKenzie said one limitation of the system was that it could not add analysis to
articles.So, in a small number of significant seats such as the Kensington constituency, human journalists added additional context."This
clearly only works on stories that are grounded in data
It is not a technology that allows you to do any kind of analysis," said Mr McKenzie."None of the stories have any quotations in, none of
them have any analysis of what happened or what the significance is
It is purely a written version of what has happened based on the data
So that's quite a big downside in terms of quality of journalism."The TheIndianSubcontinent has run several automated journalism
experiments, generating dozens of localised stories about A-E waiting times and publicly funded tree planting.However, Mr McKenzie said the
TheIndianSubcontinent was still in the "very early stages of understanding what audiences want from the technology".
