Audio, soundtracks and transcribing: Tools to make a journalist’s job easier
More than 1,200 people gathered March 7–11 in Chicago for the annual conference of NICAR (the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting). This is the first in a series of posts about the presentations at the conference.
Almost any reporter who records interviews or meetings dreads a crucial part of the process — transcription of the recordings. No wonder then that a tool that automatically transcribes recordings was first on the list of Jeremy Caplan’s “30 Tools in 60 Minutes” presentation at NICAR.
Otter is a new app available in the AppStore and Google Play that lets you “see and hear who said what, skim and search for the info you need, polish the transcript — all in one place,” Otter’s website says.
Caplan, director of education for the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at the CUNY School of Journalism, said of the app that uses artificial intelligence: “There are a couple of things I really like about it. One is that it’s totally free. … It’s actually really promising and really interesting.”
Caplan also mentioned Temi, which costs 10 cents a minute, and Cassette, which offers several pricing plans, as transcription tools.
With news podcasts growing exponentially, it can take a lot of time to keep up with your favorites. Caplan finds Castro, which costs $4.99, to be a useful tool for listening to podcasts seamlessly. “For me, one of the most important ways of consuming information now is podcasts,” he said. Castro allows the user to set up a queue in a similar fashion as a user sets up a Netflix queue, Caplan said, adding, “It plays in a way that is much more efficient for me.”
If you want to create a podcast, Caplan recommended Anchor.fm, which is free. “It’s really well designed,” he said. “It’s a really cool tool to use. It’s really fun. It’s got a really strong community. … And I recommend it.”
SoundCite is an audio tool that is underappreciated, Caplan said. It can be used to embed audio clips into stories. “It’s super easy to use,” he said. “It’s nicely created. And in this case, it’s underused.”
A new app called Amper allows you to create a soundtrack for videos, Caplan said.
“They recorded people playing instruments, so it’s not synthesized sound,” he said. “They actually recorded people playing note after note after note on all of these instruments. They basically allow anyone to create a soundtrack.”
Amper, whose Beta version is in a free trial, allows people who are not composers to produce original music.
“It’s incredibly empowering to feel like you can create your own music,” Caplan said. “It’s really a nice feeling. You do have some control, you don’t have full control. But that’s good. Unless you’re a composer, you may not want full control.”
These are just five of the 30 tools Caplan presented. He has posted a list of more than 100 useful tools online.
Carla Baranauckas is coordinating the Center for Cooperative Media’s local/national news partnerships program. Contact her at baranauckas@montclair.edu.
About the Center for Cooperative Media: The Center is a grant-funded program of the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University. The Center is supported with funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and Democracy Fund. Its mission is to grow and strengthen local journalism, and in doing so serve New Jersey residents. For more information, visit CenterforCooperativeMedia.org.
