By Priti Patnaik

Here’s is an interesting interview in The Guardian with Frank Schirrmacher, the publisher of the second-biggest German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ). His book that talks about the industrialization of information has been well received. In this interview titled, In the age of informavores, algorithms will replace journalists, he talks about algorithms automating journalism and making journalists dispensable.

Apparently, the term informavore characterizes an organism that consumes information. It is meant to be a description of human behavior in modern information society – in comparison to omnivore, a description of humans consuming food. There is a danger in letting algorithms decide what journalists should write about, he says. At one point he is even ranting about Search Engine Optimization (SEO). But if advertisers rely on these algorithms, there is not much what journalism managements can do. Here’s a link to one of his interviews on the book. He does not call this cultural pessimism, but says that the new technology clashes with the history of thought in the European context.

I personally believe that algorithms cannot replace journalists. Nuanced news judgment takes years to build – an objective one, more so. No amount of sophistication of computers and algorithms can replace it. Automation can prioritize and organize an explosion of information, but you will still need a reporter and an editor working real-time. Lets not forget that information consumers will always be human and not just investors making trading decisions.