This is a great question that both Palantir and Ringier realize is top of mind for many people who share concerns about the prospect of algorithms influencing what journalists should write about. But this is neither the intent nor the reality of this project. The vision here is to better empower the journalists with a unified view of relevant data, so that they are able to make the most informed and conscious decisions (e.g. why are we writing this story?). Data is just one factor among others and, at the end of the day, is only an indicator to support the journalists decision-making process before publishing an article. Journalists can learn from data, but they can also always decide against it. Blick.ch publishes stories that are interesting for their users and at the same time they follow a joint mission to write about things that are relevant for society in general.

Data also plays a role in a number of key longer-term content projects at Ringier, e.g. within the Equal-Voice initiative. Instead of promoting quotas, Ringier is using its journalistic and technological influence to advocate gender equality. Using a semantic algorithm developed in-house, the EqualVoice factor measures the visibility of women in articles published by Ringier. The EqualVoice factor comprises two objective indicators: the Teaser Score, which evaluates the visibility of women in images, headlines and titles, and the Body Score, which shows how often women and men are mentioned in an article’s text. The aim is to increase the visibility of women in the media and give them an equal voice.