Saturday, October 11, 2003

Automated syndication doesn't replace an editor

Curious what ESPN pundits might say about today's football game between Michigan State and Illinois, I went to espn.com and drilled down until I found the Michigan State team page. Look what I found:



The two articles are from October 8, and they have nothing to do with Michigan State. Obviously some automated syndicator robot has found "Michigan State" tangentially mentioned in these articles, and serves up irrelevant content to the reader.

ESPN's main presence is of course cable TV, but they syndicate content for their Web site as well as their magazine. The Web presence needs a smarter robot or a human editor.