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This week, when a 4.4-magnitude earthquake hit L.A., the L.A. Times’ Ken Schwencke was the first to break the story. But, the actual author of the post wasn’t Schwencke -- it was Quakebot, an algorithm he created around two years ago. The article was no masterpiece, but it clearly conveyed the essential information such as the quake’s magnitude and epicenter via the USGS Earthquake Notification Service. Schwecke’s robo-reporter isn’t the only one of its kind, either: just this weekend, the Guardian wrote a post about its own GUARBOT, which was programmer Will Franklin’s attempt to make a robot that could create news pieces with analysis. The article GUARBOT wrote began with, “The crime-ridden family of quinoa…” and didn’t get much better from there. What role do computers have in the future of journalism? Will we see more Quakebots, or even a smarter GUARBOT? This week, we’re joined by Ken Schwencke of the Los Angeles Times and Christer Clerwall, assistant professor at Karlstad University. We’ll also be joined by Andrew Lih of American University, and MediaShift’s Mark Glaser will host.