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BREAKING: The ways people hear about big news these days; “into a million pieces,” says source
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March 17, 2014, 2:23 p.m.
Reporting & Production
LINK: www.latimes.com  ➚   |   Posted by: Caroline O'Donovan   |   March 17, 2014

The East Coast woke up this morning to news that an earthquake had hit Los Angeles. In Los Angeles, folks woke up to…an actual earthquake. But who broke that story?

Indeed, Ken Schwencke, programmer and journalist at the Los Angeles Times, has been using a bot for more than a year to auto-report and publish newswire-type stories about earthquakes in California.

Schwenke continues to pursue the possibilities for robot reporting at the Times, even considering the possibility of having one bot talk to another.

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