An automatic report generator provides a narrative account of a newsworthy happening such as an sporting event by using templates. The game events are retrieved from storage and various statistics are generated from the game log and from past game logs. A template is selected for report generation in a two step process. First, conditional criteria associated with a template are compared to the game statistics to determine whether the template matches the game. In a second step, the remaining candidate templates are subjected to a weighting analysis by which the template providing the most detailed description, or describing the most relevant events of the game is selected. Once selected, game specific information is inserted into the template through the use of functions calls that request game specific data from the game log or from the game statistics generator.