• By Hamilton Nolan
    Oct 19, 2009 1:20 PM 4,339
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    Computer Beats Humans at Formulaic Crap

    In your malicious Monday media column: computers replace sportswriters (finally), rumored layoffs at W mag and Lucky, a new way for death to save the media, and the salvation of publishing arrives.

    HOLY GRAIL ALERT: Computer nerds at Northwestern University have created a computer program that, all you do is plug in the stats from a baseball game and it will write an entire news story about that baseball game, and the news story is not even bad. The computer program's name: Jay Mariotti.


    A tipster tells us that in addition to the previously reported layoffs at Vanity Fair last Friday, W Magazine also laid off 8-10 employees that day. ALSO: Another tipster tells us there were at least four layoffs at Lucky today, including a few editors.
    If you know more about the endless magazine layoffs, email us.


    Who says the media business is grim? A TV station in Saginaw, Michigan "is generating revenue by running on-air and online obituary ads after three of the region's four daily newspapers reduced publication to three days a week." This works especially well in Saginaw, Michigan, where everyone would rather be dead.


    HarperCollins CEO Jane Friedman has figured out how to save the book publishing industry: Hire cheap, out-of-work editors to repackage old classics into E-books. Uh, hooray?


    Send an email to Hamilton Nolan, the author of this post, at Hamilton@gawker.com.