Gannett's new high school sports sites -- and robotic story writing?

Good idea. I'm getting my kid a scholarship, dammit!

 

I think MaxPreps already uses robotic writing, and it's awful.

A sample from a school chosen at random
http://www.maxpreps.com/contests/jqsRae96PUqrWksKHqfitg/football-fall-09/boxscore-hercules-hercules-vs-mission-san-jose-fremont.htm

California High School Football - Hercules knocks off Mission San Jose

(September 25, 2009: Hercules, CA 94547) The Hercules Titans football squad scored 30 points and limited the visiting Mission San Jose Warriors to 7 in the Titans non-league win on Friday.

The Titans now possess a 2-2 record. They play next when they travel to Richmond for a Alameda Contra Costa battle on Friday, October 2. Hercules will play a Oilers squad coming off a 22-18 non-league win over Marshall (San Francisco, CA). The Oilers record now stands at 1-3.

Coming up next, the Warriors play the American Eagles (Fremont, CA) in a Mission Valley battle, on Friday, October 2. Mission San Jose will attempt to advance on its 0-3 season record. The Eagles go into the battle with a 1-2 record after their 20-15 non-league win over Tennyson (Hayward, CA).

 

Correct and correct. MaxPreps gets away with it because it is and will (under its biz model) always be a free site.

The newspaper intends to pry 50 or 75 cents from your pocket to read this sort of prose in print each day and/or put it behind the pay wall they think you'll pay $8.95/month to breach.

Yeah, good luck with that.

 

That's mind-numbing.

I love the philosophy on this -- that parents/fans are so eager to read about their little darlings that they will read any crap a machine can spit out.

If you don't have any names, you got nothing.

 

Yeah, one of the "trusted users" in such a system at a paper in my former chain was Joc Strap.

 

Hey, my kid's name wasn't in the story. Do you know how hard he works? Goddamn stupid robot.

 

"My Commodore 64 is going to kick your TRASH-100's ass. Then you'll be sorry you didn't use his name in your story."

 

It's obvious that all they had was a score and a schedule plus conference standings.

Even Red "Reboot" Smith couldn't make chicken salad out of that.

 

And you forgot the JV score. The R2 units try hard too.

 

This is doomed for failure on many fronts, and I'll be happy to watch the machines go down on a grand scale. Nice move Gannett. This is like punching holes in the Titanic...geesh.

 

SkyNet needs to do something to practice with in preparation for taking over the world. Why not newspapers?