#007 2 The Long Good Read #guardiancoffee007 Introduction Welcome to the Long Good Read. This is an experi- This newspaper is in beta. It's an experiment in Woot, we got renewed for Season Two. mental, almost entirely automated newspaper that combining the Guardian's readers, writers and Back once again after a lovely break and sorry if the uses an algorithm to pick the week's best long- robots with Newspaper Club's short-run printing cover is messing with your eyes, I'll explain in a mo- form journalism from the Guardian. The idea was tools, to produce a newspaper that's completely ment. started by developer Dan Catt, print-your own unlike the daily Guardian. If you're reading The Long Good Read for the first newspaper service Newspaper Club, the design We're only printing 500 copies, and it's just for time let me show you around a little. This is what team at Mohawk and the technology editorial team #guardiancoffee, so it needed to be quick and easy we're calling a "Data Driven Newspaper" a weekly at the Guardian. We've put this together for you to to produce. 'One person, one hour' was the goal, collection of stories and articles based on various read with your coffee. Enjoy! And please do tell us and achieving that required automating as much as numbers, such as comments, shares and view what you think - what else should we include in our possible, while still retaining an editorial eye. counts, which give articles an "interestingness experimental, automatic newspaper? First, the team at the Guardian wrote a small tool score". @thelonggoodread or to sift through the most popular and interesting Over the last 7 days the Guardian has published [email protected] long form content, as driven by website analytics, 2,625 stories in 23 different sections and sub-sec- Spend time listening to anyone in the media in- comments and social media. tions. Each of those dots on the front cover is one of dustry, you might think newspapers are dead. In A selection of these are then imported into News- those stories and the colour is the section. All the fact it's just pulse of the big media businesses paper Club's browser based tool, ARTHR, and pink/magenta dots are cultural stories; books, films, around the newspapers that is growing weaker, with they're quickly laid out into templates designed just music and so on, the greens are sports and football, readership and advertising revenues falling and in- for this project. while the yellow is lifestyle and fashion. creased competition from new technology just a Then, it's onto one of Newspaper Club's printing The size of the dot is based on the number of words, part of that. presses, where it's printed, packed, and delivered from 1 (for videos) up to the longest article of 5,284 But newspapers themselves are a delightful, tac- straight to #guardiancoffee and into your hands. words. tile, luxurious technology in their own right. The Of course, this isn't designed to replace the daily This is useful to know, because the "robots" that success of Newspaper Club, which lets anyone Guardian paper. It's an experiment to see what's pick the stories for this paper prefer the longer sto- cheaply print their own newspaper, shows that possible at the other end of the spectrum, using ries. I've also programmed them to favour cooking newspapers have been reclaimed in a way. new technology and techniques to produce a news- articles but alas this week it seems as though none Its success is partly down to our curiosity about paper as quickly as a webpage. made the final cut. being able to professionally print in a format that And if you like it, wait a little while and maybe So in short, the robots aka the algorithms, sort used to be hard for an individual to access, but it is we'll be able to generate one tailored just for you. through those 2,625 stories looking for the ones that also part of a wider craving for tangible, physical Tom Taylor scored highly on the Guardian's "interestingness" products to compensate for our digital dependency. Co-founder and head of engineering metric that are also over a certain word count, with Our screen lives make much of our life feel over- Newspaper Club a slight bonus if it involved simmering something whelming, yet at the same time we have nothing newspaperclub.com/longgoodread over a slow temperature for 10-15 minutes. And it physical to show for it. And there's a real human throws a bunch top performers into the "pool". pleasure in being able to make and hold something Then I come along and look at the pool of items se- in your hands. lected for me, reject the ones I don't like the look of Editorially, we get enormous satisfaction in ex- and throw the rest into Newspaper Club's ARTHR ploring and playing with new projects. It's not about tool which handles the layout. A bit of tweaking and finding a future for paper, but a future for the sto- off it goes to the printer and then out to #guardian- ries that deserve telling. Where shall we go next? coffee and you. Jemima Kiss All while the robots are counting, collating and get- Head of technology - editorial ting ready for the next issue. The Guardian Dan Catt theguardian.com/tech Developer revdancatt.com The Long Good Read #guardiancoffee007 3 NHS patient data to be made available for sale to drug and insurance firms Privacy experts warn there will be no way for pub- department, university researcher, pharmaceutical tween public and private is these days. Look at Dr lic to work out who has their medical records or company or insurance company" in a request to ac- Foster [which] is a private company that used data how they are using it cess the database. to show significantly how things can be improved in By Randeep Ramesh, social affairs editor In an attempt to ease public concern, this month the NHS and revealed what was going wrong at Mid Drug and insurance companies will from later this NHS England is sending a leaflet entitled Better In- Staffs. The key test is whether the data will be used year be able to buy information on patients – includ- formation Means Better Care to 26m households, to to improve patient care." ing mental health conditions and diseases such as say parts of the care.data database will be shared Campaigners warned many members of the public cancer, as well as smoking and drinking habits – with "researchers and organisations outside the would be uneasy about private companies benefit- once a single English database of medical data has NHS" – unless people choose to opt out via their ing from their health data – especially when the been created. family doctor. spread of data will not be routinely audited. Phil Harvested from GP and hospital records, medical However, a leading academic and government ad- Booth, co-ordinator at patient pressure group med- data covering the entire population will be upload- viser on health privacy said pursuing a policy that Confidential, said: "One of people's commonest ed to the repository controlled by a new arms- opened up data to charities and companies without concerns about their medical records is that they'll length NHS information centre, starting in March. clearly spelling out privacy safeguards left serious be used for commercial purposes, or mean they are Never before has the entire medical history of the unanswered questions about patient confidentiality. discriminated against by insurers or in the work- nation been digitised and stored in one place. Julia Hippisley-Cox, a professor of general prac- place. Advocates say that sharing data will make medical tice at Nottingham University who sits on the NHS's "Rather than prevent this, the care.data scheme is advances easier and ultimately save lives because it confidentiality advisory group – the high-level body deliberately designed so that 'pseudonymised' data will allow researchers to investigate drug side ef- that advises the health secretary on accessing confi- – information that can be re-identified by anyone fects or the performance of hospital surgical units dential patient data without consent – said that who already holds information about you – can be by tracking the impact on patients. while there may be "benefits" from the scheme "if passed on to 'customers' of the information centre, But privacy experts warn there will be no way for extraction [sale] of identifiable data is to go ahead, with no independent scrutiny and without even no- the public to work out who has their medical then patients must be able find out who has their tifying patients. It's a disaster just waiting to hap- records or to what use their data will be put. The ex- identifiable data and for what purpose". pen." tracted information will contain NHS numbers, date Hippisley-Cox added that "there should be a clear Booth said the five listed reasons data can be re- of birth, postcode, ethnicity and gender. audit trail which the patient can access and there leased for are exceptionally broad: health intelli- Once live, organisations such as university re- needs to be a simple method for recording data gence, health improvement, audit, health service search departments – but also insurers and drug sharing preferences and for these to be respected". research and service planning. He said: "Officials companies – will be able to apply to the new Health Davies, who is a GP, defended the database, say- would have you believe they're doing this all for re- and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) to gain ing there was "an absolute commitment to trans- search or improving care but the number of non- access to the database, called care.data.