Is This The End For Financial Bloggers?

Let’s face it, most financial bloggers and writers are as boring as bat-shit.

Profit margins, company restructuring, non-farm payrolls, dry goods index and other similar tediousness makes my brain physically shrivel – I can actually feel it killing me.

But it seems our fun-challenged friends who write this stuff might be about to lose their place in the world, alongside the unfortunate writers who find themselves getting paid to turn out pages of the stuff.

According to the Atlantic, computers are about to take over the realm of what passes for journalism in areas dominated by numbers and data sets – specifically the areas of sports writing and our beloved financial journalism.

Computers are obviously way better at, well, computing than the average human and now they apparently have the capability to churn out ‘stories’ based on the reams of data they are fed.

According to the Atlantic, “Wherever there is data, Narrative Science founders say, their software can generate a prose analysis that’s robust, reliable, and readable.”

Clearly readable is a relative term here.

Nonetheless, this is a warning call to writers everywhere.

It’s time to get raw.  Forget the reporting of numbers, any old computer can – and shortly will – do that.  We need to write using the stuff that computers have no concept of; things like creative thought, humour and affection.

I have never met an artistic computer with a sense of humour that blows me kisses as I walk out the door, and until that time comes there is a place for writers in all areas of journalism, sports and finance included.

It might just take a little soul.

She's phoning in her latest article for the WSJ.

Liked it?  Please subscribe over there (up a bit…up a bit.. Got it!) ->>

And follow me on Twitter, or Facebook.

Hated it?  Why not tell the world?  The share buttons are right below.