President and CEO of the Yonhap News Agency Cho Sung-boo (Photo: Yonhap) Hanoi (VNA) – Presidentand CEO of Yonhap News Agency Cho Sung-boo has shared the experience of his newsagency in applying cutting-edge technologies in news production ahead of the 44th meeting of the Executive Board of the Organisation of Asia-Pacific Agencies(OANA) in Hanoi.
In an interview granted to thehost Vietnam News Agency, Cho Sung-boo, as Vice President of OANA, alsorecommended cooperation areas for OANA news agencies in order to improve theorganisation’s operational efficiency.
The following is the full textof the interview.
Question: The modern media landscape requires all of us tohave technical knowledge and to innovate. This is also the theme of the 44th Executive Board Meeting of OANA in Hanoi. Yonhap has applied cutting-edgetechnologies in news production, including an automated reporting system. Canyou share Yonhap's experience in maintaining and consolidating its positionamidst fierce competition?
Answer: Soccerbotwas Yonhap's first robot journalist, developed to cover the results of EnglishPremier League (EPL) matches, which generate huge interest in South Korea.Soccerbot has three stages: The Data Scraping Engine collects data on each match,the Text-Writing Algorithm autonomously organizes sentences from the collecteddata to construct a full text article, and finally the Article Templatepolishes the article by dividing phrases into smaller segments and adjusts themby mimicking the text patterns of human journalists. Soccerbot ran from Januaryto May 2018, creating 169 articles on EPL games.
The Olympicbot was an AI-based robotreporter developed to cover news on the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympic Games.Olympicbot was able to autonomously interpret the progress of the Games andproduce a number of different articles, including upcoming event schedules,match reports, medals tables and, more importantly, even cover relatively unpopularevents that were not allocated to reporters for coverage due to time andmanpower limits. Olympicbot automatically produced and distributed1,190 news articles on the PyeongChang Olympics and Paralympics.
YonhapNews Agency will continue to invest in developing innovative content productiontechnology.
Question: What cooperation areas should OANA news agencies focus on to improve theOANA's operational efficiency?
Answer: Yonhap News Agencywill assume the presidency of OANA after hosting the 17th OANA General Assemblyin November. We will endeavor to promote active exchanges of news andinformation, alleviate the information gap between countries and encourageexpanded cooperative measuresamong OANA members. Yonhap asks for support from all OANA members to make jointefforts to achieve these goals.
Thefirst clause of the OANA statute states that its purpose is "to increaseand facilitate a freer flow of news and information in Asia and thePacific." Therefore, OANA's official website must be updated to provide abetter media environment for more convenient exchanges and sharing of newscontent between members.
Sincethe current OANA website requires the manual uploading of articles and photos,the system must be changed to enable automatic uploads of news content fromeach OANA member, which will naturally lead to an increase in the volume ofnews content shared on the website.
Moreover,annual OANA General Assemblies and Executive Board Meetings should be becomepractical meetings for helping members chart their future strategies, ratherthan social gatherings of representativesfrom OANA member agencies to make vague promises on cooperation.
Wehope OANA will assume a leading role in protecting the intellectual propertiesand rights of member agencies for content distribution, as well as safeguardingtheir mutual interests.-VNA
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