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Sports coverage

Meet your new sportswriter

Northwestern University has produced a sportswriter they hope will be hired at community papers throughout the United States.  Not a new graduate who wants to work in community journalism – a piece of software.  The Intelligent Information Lab at Northwestern calls their new sportswriter StatsMonkey, and they think he’s perfect for community papers covering Little League games.  The co-director of the lab says that StatsMonkey is designed “to write the stories no one else is writing.”  The program takes the stats of the game and produces a sports story on the game.  Click on the link above to hear NPR’s story about the new software, plus an example of the type of stories the software can “write.”

By Kathryn Jones Malone

Kathryn Jones Malone is co-director of the Texas Center for Community Journalism. She began her career as a staff writer at the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, then worked as a staff writer for the Dallas Times Herald and The Dallas Morning News; as a contract writer for The New York Times; as a writer-at-large for Texas Monthly magazine; as editor of the Glen Rose Reporter; and as a freelance writer for numerous state, regional and national magazines. She teaches journalism at Tarleton State University.