It is now possible to listen to journalism from The Correspondent – via your new audio app!
Whether while travelling, doing chores or preparing a meal, from today, you, the members of The Correspondent, will be able to fit your antidote to the news grind more easily into your daily lives. Just open The Correspondent app and press play!
Why have we built an audio app for you?
We’re offering members an audio app for three reasons:
- So our journalism better fits into your lives. The world’s a busy place, but in-depth journalism is more important than ever. Read-aloud stories and podcasts help you gain in-depth insights in a way that works for you. And with this new focus on audio journalism an app just makes sense: it’s a far more pleasant way to listen to audio stories than via a third-party website.
- To be the masters of our audio destiny! With more audio stories, we don’t want to become dependent on major listening platforms like Spotify. We’ve noticed they’re trying to make audio more and more exclusive by buying up big shows and putting them behind a paywall. We want our journalism to remain as inclusive as possible, so we’ve chosen to take our audio directly to you, the members who make it financially possible. And it’s better for your privacy as well! Without our own app, we are solely reliant on third-party platforms, such as Soundcloud, and cannot guarantee that these providers have the same data minimisation policy that we have.
- So we can offer you more multimedia in the future. Audio journalism and an app are two of the most asked-for features by you, our members, and we’re really excited to now offer both. But we also have big ambitions to make them even better! Our team of developers will continue to work on the app, in collaboration with our newsroom and the designers at the creative agency Momkai. In the future, we want to make the app multimedia, enabling you to watch, read, and listen to journalism from The Correspondent.
As a member of The Correspondent, you will know that inclusivity is one of our principles. As such, in addition to the above, we will continue to distribute our audio journalism through other listening apps and services.
However, we recommend that you download the app, designed exclusively for members so as to have the most privacy-friendly listening experience, and to be able to join in conversations with our correspondents and other members.
And don’t worry, we promise that with every piece of audio journalism we publish, there will always be a transcript available.
So, how does the app work?
Once you’ve downloaded the app and launched it on your iPhone or Android device, you’ll be able to see the featured story, our story collections and the stories you’ve recently listened to. Under the Recent tab, you will find all stories in chronological order.
When you click on a read-out-loud story or podcast, the player will open with a short description, a sharing button, a link to the text version and the conversation that follows the story. Here you can ask questions to the correspondent or share any knowledge and experiences relevant to the subject of the story.
The story you are listening to will be visible in a mini-player at the bottom of your screen and will continue to play even if you close the app. You can use the controls of your phone to pause, play, rewind, fast forward or change the volume.
Who’ll be reading out the stories?
With correspondents and guest writers on five continents, it’s just not practical – or always possible – for us to have writers read out their own stories. So instead, we’ve hired some fantastic voice artists, themselves based the world over, to join our team and read our journalism for you.
You’ll meet them via the daily newsletters over the next few days (you can also take a look at their profiles now), and in the coming weeks and months, as they become a part of your listening routine, they’ll become even more familiar to you.
Tell us what you think!
There would be no app without our members, and we want to make sure it’s giving you exactly what you need.
What do you think of this first version? Please let us know in the contributions below. Suggestions for improvements are also very welcome. Found a bug? Please email hello@thecorrespondent.com with a screenshot and a short description of what happened.
Here’s to unbreaking news – now also in audio!