What we’re talking about: the latest about news automation

United Robots is now live with six different automated content products across some 30 newsrooms in the US – with Weather Warnings and Real Estate sales the most popular ones, and Wildfire updates the most recent. Insights from our work with our US publisher partners include that it's important to decide why and how you're automating content production, and that there are different ways for that content to generate value for your newsroom and readers.

We're thrilled to announce that we'll be hosting a workshop during INMA's upcoming Media Subscriptions Summit in New York City, headlining our US publisher partner Advance Local. United Robots has worked with the group since mid 2022, and from the start it was apparent that this publisher has a very robust methodology for testing and rolling out new features and content across the group. VP Content Strategy Lamar Graham and Matt Dowling, Director of Breaking and Local News, NJ Advance Media will take to the stage in NYC to share insights in how the publisher has experimented with and is rolling out automated real estate and weather warnings content across its ten local titles.

We’re proud to note that United Robots publisher partners feature heavily in a big, new international report on automated journalism from INMA (International News Media Association). While we’ve not been directly involved in the production of the report, it relies on several cases from our publisher partners and draws on insights provided by us and our clients during workshops and webinars over the past ten months. And its two main takeaways are that 1, automation is good for the bottom line, and 2, it frees up time for (but does not replace) journalists.

We're happy to announce that in the US market we're now working with PropMix – a collaboration that enables media companies to deliver hyper local real estate articles containing sales and market insights. The partnership means we're able to provide highly relevant and timely real estate news stories for local media companies to attract readers – based on top quality data from a renowned provider.

Swedish local media group Stampen was the first in the country to publish our new automated business articles, based on annual reports, on their sites Hallands Nyheter, Hallandsposten and TTELA in April. 
A few weeks later, another major Swedish local media company, NTM, followed suit, publishing the business articles on Upsala Nya Tidning. NTM have also opted to include the automatically generated data visualizations we offer via our new partner, Norwegian data visualization experts everviz.

We're proud to announce that our first UK publisher partner, Scottish local media group DC Thomson, is now live with automated sports content from United Robots. In a pilot, we're delivering automated match reports from four junior football leagues. The delivery includes United Robots’ Q&A feature, which allows coaches to submit match comments via text message.

We're happy to announce that we're now working in partnership with US local media group Forum Communications, delivering robot written match reports from two junior leagues for their ice hockey vertical The Rink Live in the US upper Midwest. This is our first delivery of automated sports content to a US publisher.

Next week – Tuesday Feb 8 – INMA is hosting their first ever workshop focused on content automation. The event is part of the Media Subscription Summit, and we're happy to announce that two of our successful publisher partners will be sharing insights and answer questions. 

We're excited to announce our first North American publisher to go live with automated sports content. It's the very digitally savvy Brunswick News in New Brunswick, Canada, who are running a content automation pilot in partnership with United Robots. We deliver game reports for two junior ice hockey leagues in the region, complete with game graphics with team logos, results and goal scorers. This new junior sports content forms part of Brunswick News' subscription offer.

Local Swedish publisher TTELA publishes automated local weather updates for four municipalities, driving some 2,000 page views per day and even generating some conversions. 
Getting automated content from United Robots has become a boost for TTELA's coverage.