UPDATE 2: Lots of press and blog coverage:

• Computers are the Sports Reporters of the Future
• The Automatic Reporter
• US Companies want to automate Sports News
• A New Breed of Sports Reporters
• Farewell Deadspin; Sports Blogs to be Replaced by Algorithms
• StatSheet Looks to Automate Sports Reporting
• In the US, algorithms are already reporting the news
• StatSheet to Create Its Own Artificial Sports Journalists
• Sportberichterstattung auf Knopfdruck--Computergenerierter Journalismus?
• Robot Sports Reporters on the Roster
• Game Reports and How Your Job Will Disappear
• Robot Reporters Could Help Alleviate Workload in Some Newsrooms
• The rise of robot journalists

UPDATE 1: ReadWriteWeb has picked up on this post. Read here.

I started StatSheet back in 2007 in part to create tools to make it easier for sports bloggers and journalists to write great sports content.  Digging up links to players on ESPN.com, copy/pasting a boxscore, and taking screen captures of stats are not very efficient.  StatSheet.com is a research tool with embeddable charts, and now Embed StatSheet allows anyone to embed virtually any kind of stat or chart directly in content.

But it's time to go a step further.  When I launched StatFix in 2008, it was my first attempt to automate the creation of sports content.  I generate a new and interesting stat for every college basketball team (all 347 of them) every day.  Recently, a project called Stats Monkey has done something similar with baseball game recaps (although I can't find any sample content).

Now, I'm in the process of developing completely automated sports content, which will take the form of blogs.  I'm not talking just a "stat of the day" or game recaps, but a lot more. I've identified 21 different types of sports stories that can be automated.  You could say I'm trying to make the process of writing a sports blog so easy you don't have to do anything at all.  My goal for these blogs in version 1.0 is that at least 90% of the readers think the content was created by a human. One of the nice attributes of algorithmic content is that it can be improved over time.  A blogger/writer's internal script is pretty much set.  They generally don't change or improve the quality or comprehensiveness of their content over time in a significant way, but algorithms can be upgraded continuously. The "voice" of the content can be improved.

Will automated content be the end of sports journalism or blogging?  Definitely not.  There are always multiple sides to every story.  And of course there are some categories of news (e.g. breaking news stories) that can't be easily automated.  I'd like to see an algorithm write a story about Tiger Wood's infidelities!  However, it will take only a short amount of time to get to the point where the average sports fan can't tell the difference between human generated content and automated content.

Is automated content the future of sports journalism?  It will definitely play a big part.  Large sports media companies can't cover every team to the level they cover the most popular teams.  But algorithms don't care about the size of your market.  I can generate content that is just as in-depth for North Dakota State as I can Duke. Automated content will be a boon for smaller markets.

If blogging disrupted traditional sports media, I believe automated content will disrupt blogging (to some degree).  In effect, disrupting the disruptor. Stay tuned!

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