Journalism, once thought of as a career field that was going the way of the gas station attendant, has been revitalized in recent years – especially for tech-savvy millennials. There has been an explosion in recent years of apps for journalists and writers, and we’re here to help you sort through them.
Whether you want to be a freelance writer or have your name on a masthead, opportunities abound for work at outlets both old and new. In addition to so-called “legacy” media companies trying to appeal to younger consumers, digital outlets like Buzzfeed, Vox, The Huffington Post, Politico, and others are creating thousands of new jobs for aspiring writers. But if you want to move into this exciting field, it’s important to stay on top of the latest tools. With that in mind, here are ten of the top apps for journalists and writers of all stripes. Check them out and pick your favorites, so you’ll be ready when you get your first big assignment.
Trello is an app that gives the user easy tools to keep story ideas organized. It serves as a digital replacement for that bulletin board full of index cards. Individual “cards” can easily be categorized, shared, and moved around. Jordan Novet of VentureBeat says, “I use it to capture story ideas, list steps to take for articles, and keep track of stories I’ve scheduled. It even works as a good to-do list.”
When you sit down to write, do you get distracted by the need to check e-mail one more time, or see who responded to that last Facebook comment? Byword is here to help. It’s a distraction-free writing tool that gives you just a nice-looking blank page. When used in full-screen mode, it takes potential distractions out of the picture. Plus, it syncs everything you’re writing to all your devices.
Journalists are relying more and more on social media to find new stories. But how can you cull important events from the stream of birthday announcements, GIFs, and live-tweeting of TV shows? Nuzzel is your answer. It creates a newsfeed for you based on stories shared by your friends and friends-of-friends. The second degree of separation is just enough to get informed of topics that might otherwise escape your notice, but are still interesting. Interesting bit of trivia: it was started by the Friendster guys.
If you’re covering the crime beat, this app is a must. You can listen to police scanners worldwide, see how far you are from the scanner in case you want to arrive at the scene of the crime, share feeds with friends (even ones who don’t have the app themselves!), and even talk to other users on Twitter.
Since the 1840s, the Associated Press has been a leader in news. Today, it remains the primary news service in the U.S. The AP app adds stories from more than a thousand local newspapers and TV stations into its already exhaustive wire service, making this easily one of the top apps for journalists and writers.
With visual journalism growing exponentially, it is ever more important for journalists to be able to communicate in both words and images. Datawrapper makes it super-easy to create visualizations and charts.
The bane of every journalist’s existence is transcribing interviews. Toggling between an audio recording and your word processing program is incredibly awkward, even for the pros. Transcribe solves that by giving you an audio player and a text editor on the same screen, so you don’t have to switch back and forth. Also, there are single-key shortcuts for slowing down, pausing, and rewinding.
Writing for newspapers can be intimidating. What’s the difference between “continual” and “continuous”? What’s the plural of “Mrs.”? When do you use the hyphen in “left-wing,” and when do you leave it out? All of these questions, and countless others, find their definitive answers in the AP Stylebook. The book’s convenient online version offers an app that links to your account, so you can look up your favorite pages even when offline – so you’ll never be stuck wondering if “strikebreaker” is one word or two.
If you find yourself working with photo or video, Tagg.ly is the perfect tool. You can take your media and add name, date, time, and a preferred URL or Twitter handle. And, perfect for this Instagram-centric age, you have the option of square photo or video.
In order to have something to transcribe (see #7), you first need to record your interview. iSaidWhat?!, cutesy name aside, is one of the best ways to do it. It’s extremely simple to use, and lets you edit and share audio easily in addition to recording.
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