Some of my friends and readers may think I'm newspaper bashing, but it's not true. I love newspapers. So it saddens me to read in the NYTimes that 2009 was the worst year for the newspaper industry ( http://tinyurl.com/yao4fmf) since 2008 (which was the worst year since the Depression). But it is even more depressing to read (http://tinyurl.com/ykev33j) that Tokyo researchers have created a robot that performs what the article describes as "journalism". Wrong. A robot may be able to take a series of sports stats and turn it into a reasonable facsimile of a sports story. But a robot cannot be a journalist. Sadly this is an craft grossly undervalued at most newspapers today.