Sports coverage extends to both extremes of the journalistic spectrum: stats, and color. Even TV coverage of live games is separated into two roles that represent those extremes: play-by-play, and “color commentary.”
On the text side, there are sites like FanHouse whose writing stable is stocked with high-profile columnists whose heavily voiced coverage is supplemented with statistical feeds. On the drier side, there is a new player on the scene as of today: StatSheet, a somewhat misnamed North Carolina startup that auto-produces basic sports journalism via algorithmic article creation. That is to say, no human hand touches a keyboard to generate an article. Humans create only the databases and prose-generating software from which the articles are birthed.
Why misnamed? Because a stat sheet is exactly that, a list of performance metrics. StatSheet (the startup) is info-heavy, for sure, but is intended as a reading destination, not a reference destination.
How does it read? Well … the articles hit a middle ground between human writing and robot speak. In my opinion it tries too hard to be human. I’d prefer to see an unapologetic robostyle that refuses to emulate. That would differentiate more clearly, and might blaze an untrod trail of uniquely voiced sports journalism for the 21st century.
However the thing is styled, though, this is “white space” for sure, an interesting algorithmic experiment, and sports is the perfect field. There must be a market of users who would never consume actual data intensive stat sheets, but who aren’t passionate enough about sports commentary to settle into long opinion pieces by brand-name writers. That’s the sweet spot here, and on StatSheet’s launch day I say it’s an auspicious start.
And it’s great to have a startup here in the Triangle, just down the street!
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rest at bradhill: The New York Times has
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