Leading Canadian news provider ‘The Globe and Mail’ (The Globe) has selected
Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) for its cloud services in what represents a high profile deal. The Globe, which has headquarters in Ontario, Canada, was first published in 1936 and is currently “Canada’s most-read print/digital newspaper”. It is printed in five Canadian cities and (as of 2015) had a weekly readership of over 2 million people and (as of 2013) a daily circulation of nearly 300,000. The newspaper has made AWS its “preferred cloud provider”.
Alongside preferred cloud provider status, The Globe is leveraging AWS for Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) services such as Amazon SageMaker, Amazon Comprehend, Amazon Rekognition, Amazon Textract and Amazon Polly (which turns converts the paper’s text articles to English, French, and Mandarin audio files). These solutions have added to the efficiency of The Globe’ editors and reporters, and research and other staff.
As a result of adopting AWS' solutions, the newspaper can “find, tell, and promote stories that matter to their audience” more effectively and “without the need for manual review, custom code, or machine learning experience”. The newspaper also utilizes AWS’ platform to run a recommendation engine and ‘Sophi’ - a predictive analytics platform.
“The Globe and Mail is investing heavily in data science and artificial intelligence. From our new audio feature running on Amazon Polly, to the Sophi predictive analytics platform, we are seeing great value in using AWS’s AI and ML services,” explained The Globe’s Chief Technology and Digital Officer, Greg Doufas. “The Globe originally built Sophi for its own use, but has since begun offering Sophi as a service to other news organizations. With AWS, we are able to bring our tech experts and editorial leadership together to innovate and bring new ideas to the newsroom to provide great experiences for our readers.”
“The Globe has been delivering Canada’s news since 1844, and is known for its focus on being a customer-focused organization that puts the needs of its readers first,” added Amazon Web Services Canada’s Director of Commercial Sales, Eric Gales. “As a leader in the industry, it is driven by an understanding that it needs to continue to innovate on behalf of their readers and is setting the tone for what’s possible with the world’s leading cloud. The Globe is an avid user of many of our AI and ML services, as it continues to provide new experiences for their readers to enjoy the award-winning content produced by their editorial staff.”
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