Turing’s Test 117
or fake merchandise; it is closer in part to the process patented by Philip
Parker for ICON Group in 2007, which set to produce hundreds of thousands of books and reports from databases of material available in the
public domain. Although not exactly the same NLG process used by
Wordsmith, ICON’s software-driven formatting technique is capable of
writing books with titles such as The World Market for Frozen Edible
Offal of Sheep and Horses: A 2016 Global Trade Perspective and The
2016–2021 World Outlook for 1 MW Solar Photovoltaic Government
Projects far more quickly than any individual with a word processor.
66
Such books are unlikely to win any major prizes soon, just as algorithmic journalism – despite the bravado of Kris Hammond – is unlikely
to win its robot author a Pulitzer. To consider some of the hurdles that
remain, it is worth turning to a piece of data-driven journalism that did
win that prize.
In 2017, Eric Eyre, a journalist at the Charleston Gazette-Mail based
in Western Virginia, accepted a Pulitzer for Investigative Reporting for a
series of articles written by him in 2016 that sought to expose the flood
of opioids into depressed counties in the region, resulting in the highest
rate of deaths by overdose in the USA.
67
His three winning stories –
“Drug firms fueled ‘pill mills’ in rural W.Va.” (May 22, 2016), “Pill rules
not enforced” (December 19 2016), and “780M pills, 1,728 deaths”
(December 18 2016) – drew heavily on public health statistics, as is clear
from the opening paragraphs to the December 18 story:
780M pills, 1,728 deaths
Follow the pills and you’ll find the overdose deaths.
The trail of painkillers leads to West Virginia’s southern coalfields, to
places like Kermit, population 392. There, out-of-state drug companies shipped nearly 9 million highly addictive — and potentially
lethal — hydrocodone pills over two years to a single pharmacy in
the Mingo County town.
Rural and poor, Mingo County has the fourth-highest prescription opioid death rate of any county in the United States.
The trail also weaves through Wyoming County, where shipments of
OxyContin have doubled, and the county’s overdose death rate
leads the nation. One mom-and-pop pharmacy in Oceana received
600 times as many oxycodone pills as the Rite Aid drugstore just
eight blocks away.
In six years, drug wholesalers showered the state with 780 million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills, while 1,728 West Virginians fatally
overdosed on those two painkillers, a Sunday Gazette-Mail investigation found.
The unfettered shipments amount to 433 pain pills for every man,
woman, and child in West Virginia.
68
or fake merchandise; it is closer in part to the process patented by Philip
Parker for ICON Group in 2007, which set to produce hundreds of thousands of books and reports from databases of material available in the
public domain. Although not exactly the same NLG process used by
Wordsmith, ICON’s software-driven formatting technique is capable of
writing books with titles such as The World Market for Frozen Edible
Offal of Sheep and Horses: A 2016 Global Trade Perspective and The
2016–2021 World Outlook for 1 MW Solar Photovoltaic Government
Projects far more quickly than any individual with a word processor.
66
Such books are unlikely to win any major prizes soon, just as algorithmic journalism – despite the bravado of Kris Hammond – is unlikely
to win its robot author a Pulitzer. To consider some of the hurdles that
remain, it is worth turning to a piece of data-driven journalism that did
win that prize.
In 2017, Eric Eyre, a journalist at the Charleston Gazette-Mail based
in Western Virginia, accepted a Pulitzer for Investigative Reporting for a
series of articles written by him in 2016 that sought to expose the flood
of opioids into depressed counties in the region, resulting in the highest
rate of deaths by overdose in the USA.
67
His three winning stories –
“Drug firms fueled ‘pill mills’ in rural W.Va.” (May 22, 2016), “Pill rules
not enforced” (December 19 2016), and “780M pills, 1,728 deaths”
(December 18 2016) – drew heavily on public health statistics, as is clear
from the opening paragraphs to the December 18 story:
780M pills, 1,728 deaths
Follow the pills and you’ll find the overdose deaths.
The trail of painkillers leads to West Virginia’s southern coalfields, to
places like Kermit, population 392. There, out-of-state drug companies shipped nearly 9 million highly addictive — and potentially
lethal — hydrocodone pills over two years to a single pharmacy in
the Mingo County town.
Rural and poor, Mingo County has the fourth-highest prescription opioid death rate of any county in the United States.
The trail also weaves through Wyoming County, where shipments of
OxyContin have doubled, and the county’s overdose death rate
leads the nation. One mom-and-pop pharmacy in Oceana received
600 times as many oxycodone pills as the Rite Aid drugstore just
eight blocks away.
In six years, drug wholesalers showered the state with 780 million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills, while 1,728 West Virginians fatally
overdosed on those two painkillers, a Sunday Gazette-Mail investigation found.
The unfettered shipments amount to 433 pain pills for every man,
woman, and child in West Virginia.
68