5 Best Ways To Transcribe Audio Recordings to Text Every Journalist Should Use

Journalism can never be silent. It speaks, yells, and shouts to its audience. It always has something to tell: secrets, facts, news, views, hypothesis. But have you ever thought about where does this information comes from and how much effort does it take to launch one article with good quality content which will fly over the world and catch everybody’s attention?

Journalists have to be eager to learn something new every single moment and to dig deeper into every field to sift facts from gossip and feed society with a piece of fresh and hot news. They need to be attentive and catch every little detail while searching for a news source or recording interviews. 

You can imagine that it is an easy-peasy process to write and prepare a good readable article, but in fact, it’s not like that at all. They have to work hard to carefully listen to their audio recordings and read over their notes to provide interesting content. Sounds far from what you’ve imagined being a sweet job, isn’t it?

Lots of applications and web-based software platforms to transcribe audio to the text were developed for journalists not to spend their nights at the desk with non-stop coffee flow and listening to their audio files with background noise over and over again. 

Here’s the list of 5 tips every journalist can use to transcribe audio file to text. Let’s consider each of the automatic transcription tools with their pros and cons.

1. Combine Automated And Manual Audio Transcription

There is a web-based platform called OTranscribe.com. It allows you to upload any recording or paste the YouTube link to a video file and slow it down to your comfortable speed. While in the meantime you will be able to type what you consider relevant in the embedded text editor and avoid switching back and forth between Word or Google Docs and AudioPlayer or QuickTime.

It also provides you with a set of shortcuts to make it easy to pause, rewind backward or fast forward or insert a timestamp. Your files are private and at the final stage, you have an option to export the document in a needed extension (TXT or DOCX).

Let’s consider whether this transcription service can be useful and in which way to a journalist. In fact, it depends on the needs and convenience as you can listen to a slow-motion recording and note down just the moments you’re interested in and not every word said and then waste your time editing them. The accuracy of the text also depends on the scope of the job you did yourself.                                                

However, don’t forget that the list of supported media file formats is very small, which is explained by the limited capabilities of the browser. Therefore, a proper majority of journalists need to have this in mind and check whether the format of the recording device is suitable for this service.

2. Use Automated Audio To Text Transcription

There is a bunch of automatic transcription tool for journalists offered on the market, but the latest advancement is Audext. This browser-based software is easy to use, has an intuitive interface, and is also millennials-friendly. 

Let’s consider step by step process on how to transcribe audio with Audext to transcribe audio file to text while writing an article.

All we know that the key to success for every journalist is a unique article with breaking news or comments or an interview with deep insights about the lifestyle of successful people.

The keyword here is unique so you are the pioneer. Perhaps we should also point out the fact that the safety of materials is at risk when, after an interview, the record is sent for decoding to specialized transcribing agencies. 

For that purpose, Audext offers you to create your personal account and protect all your information and evaporate your hesitations or fears that somebody can steal your article and take credit or maybe even a reward for your work, who knows?

To move further, and get to know all the advantages of Audext and how to transcribe audio to text with it you need to sign in to your personal profile and upload the recording in any format you have it. 

Half of the work is done and you can move back to the list of your tasks or grab your voice recorder and run to get one more interview, or just spare some time for meditation and inspiration.

As soon as your transcription is ready you will get an email notification with a link to follow.

Then you will be redirected to the dashboard with an accurate transcript waiting for you there.

When it’s your first time at an audio record transcription, this is a great opportunity for free transcription test-drives with Audext.

Another good thing about using Audext is that you can transcribe your audio file for free, as it offers 30 minutes of the trial if you happen to choose this service among others. Just after that choose your subscription plan and dive into our collaborative process of writing interesting and catchy articles.

The usage of audio to text transcription software is profound and impossible to replace with something else, especially for journalistic work.

Save your time, preserve your concentration and inspiration, and quickly moves you from the first stage of preparing a good article or interview almost to the last one, skipping all of the routine processes. Now the work of a journalist can become “sweeter”.

3. Think About Apps That Transcribe Audio File To Text

Do you consider yourself an up-to-date journalist? If you are tuned into all the technological trends and news then applications are your best friends to cope with and keep under control for both personal and professional tasks. 

When you are a journalist your smartphone is your “best friend” as it can be your pen and paper, your voice recorder, your video- and photo camera, your text editor, and sometimes even your laptop.

Go on and open your app manager and here’s a range of apps journalists can choose according to the needs and specifications: Cassette, Anchor, Steno, Cogi, and Audext.

Firstly you can set the recording on and forget about it, letting the real-time speech-to-text transcription grab every detail of your conversations. Just with one tap, you will be able to bookmark important topics or moments with a tag, or even get a transcribed interview right after it ends. 

One of the additional features is a search across the transcribed content for keywords or quotes. Some of the applications allow you to create text cards and pictures from the transcribed audio or short videos to share with your friends and the public.

Some of the apps offer you a “real-world rewind” feature allowing you to save the previous 15 seconds of the recording. So every time you heard something interesting and important you press the button and have this precious moment saved. Such a feature allows you to save your time and concentrate only on the key transcription moments. 

Rumor has it all over the AI developers community that soon one amazing service is going to launch, which will integrate with the smartwatches and smartphone to get instant editable transcriptions with all your notes. The name of this service is Recordly.io, and it looks amazing so let’s hope it will be the same in use.  

You know, as was mentioned above apps are perfect assistants for journalists and that is so convenient when they are here at your use all the time.

But when it comes to considering the large scope of work to be done, the old-fashioned but reliable laptop with web-based transcription software can be more useful. Because the main goal of your work is to create magically engaging content, for which you have applied no less magical means. 

To sum it up, if you need to work further with your notes and recordings move to the software platform and continue with turning your long recordings to text.

Some of them like Audext offer you web-based access to your account as an app to install on your smartphone and use synchronized data connected to your personal account.

4. Ace In Other Useful Tools On Your Smartphone

Spoken words are like flying birds and they are crucial at every interview taken. It’s really hard to book some time in a schedule of the person you’re interested in to meet, but as we advanced our lives with smartphones, an experienced journalist can make good contact with his respondent even by phone. 

There are some apps on the market that can record your calls: 

The usefulness of such voice recording software is immense as it can be a secret tool for a journalist, like a notepad to collect some missed details and a protection tool in some way to prove that something was said and not made up from the air.

5. Dictation Can Be Useful To Transcribe It Later On

Google docs, Speechnote, or Spechlogger are dictating tools, that do an excellent job of transcribing spoken words. Once you’ve dictated text you can print it, email it or upload it to your PC.

But it’s a rather controversial tool for journalists to use as in fact they will hardly ever dictate something out loud. It can have some use at interviews or meetings which are moderated by someone else or at online conferences which need to be transcribed to text quickly, almost instantly.

Though it still seems that the pocket recording device paired with a high-quality transcriber wins this battle.

Audio To Text Transcription Is So Easy

Who operates the information, rules the world. You know, that’s the motto for journalists, and knowing just one interesting fact you can either earn a fortune or a faith. Imagine how much better you can do your job when you save time when it is possible, spend resources and focus where it’s needed more. 

Be attentive and let the advantages of artificial intelligence help you to succeed and write a damn good article or an interview, which will be liked, shared, bookmarked, saved, and even rewarded.