BBC College of Journalism Blog - A vigorous and robust discussion about journalism from every perspective.

Researchers in the United States have programmed a computer to write sports copy.

The Stats Monkey team at Northwestern University's Intelligent Information Lab gave a computer a variety of what they call 'angles' - stock phrases describing the most exciting bits of a match. The computer crunches these into different combinations and a story is born.

According to Kristian Hammond from Stats Monkey:

"We have yet to have anybody read a piece of our copy and think it was written by a machine."

He told Evan Davis on BBC Radio 4's Today programme:

"Our goal is to take journalistic skills, journalistic judgment, journalistic values and embody these in automated systems."

Is this the beginning of the end for sports journalism?

You can listen to the full interview and watch a video response from James Porter, the BBC's former Head of Sports News and now programme leader for the BBC College of Journalism's Journalism Foundation.