Mobile reporting: 15 iPhone apps for journalists

Last week we published a list of 15 Android apps journalists can use when reporting from their mobile phone. Here is a list of apps for mobile reporting using an iPhone.

It has been created with the help of the @journalismnews Twitter community who used #newsapps to make suggestions.

The list focuses on apps that are most useful to journalists when they are out and about, and includes those that allow you to shoot and edit photos, video, and audio, plus write text, liveblog and gather and share stories using Twitter.

If you have an iPhone, spend £19.81 on apps and you will have a sophisticated piece of multimedia kit in your pocket.

Photos

• For taking pictures

1. Camera+ - £0.69

This app is worth 69p as it will improve the quality of you pictures. When taking a photo you can use the stabilizer or timer and then edit the image to add "clarity", crop images, flip or add a border.

Camera+ was suggested by several people, including hackademic, journalist, academic and researcher Jonathan Hewitt.

2. Pro HDR - £1.49

Pro HDR is a camera app that helps you take a better photo. It works by taking two pictures, each image focusing on a different part of the the subject, and the app then blends the two together.

Audio

3. iSaidWhat?! - £0.69

iSaidWhat?! is an excellent audio app with manual controls. It allows you to alter the recording input level, write a script that you can access from the main recording screen and you can edit by trimming and arranging clips. You can share clips via email (via m4a or wav formats), over a wireless network, or (and this is really helpful) by USB.

This app is a previous 'app of the week for journalists' (recommended by ABC journalists). It was suggested for this list by radio presenter Andy Martindale.

6. PCM Recorder (by Tascam) - free

This is a fantastic app that gives broadcast-quality sound. It "uses internal mic but records audio at a much higher quality" than the in-built voice recording app, Jason Phipps, podcast producer for the Guardian's Tech Weekly, Science Weekly and Media Talk podcasts, said in nominating it for the list.

The app provides manual controls while recording, can hold up to 12 hours of recording and saves files as wav. Sharing is via SoundCloud and files are uploaded as private so, great feature if you the interview is for your ears only.

You can then login to SoundCloud from a computer, another device or your phone and opt to make it public or you can keep it private and either play and transcribe or download the file.

Tascam, the company behind the recorder, also sells mics that fit onto an iPhone (or iPad) for about £65.

• For audio sharing

3. SoundCloud - free

SoundCloud may be best known as a music platform but it has become a favourite of lots of journalists who are using it to share audio. For example, regional publisher the KM group is using it for multiplatform reporting. And Wired.co.uk is soon to switch to SoundCloud as the player for its popular podcasts.

Last month an update to the app added a really useful feature: the ability to trim and edit before uploading.

4. Audioboo - free

Audioboo allows you to record, upload and share audio. It has been around for a few years and has a strong community of users. You can add a picture and geolocate your 'boos' and, as with SoundCloud, you can embed a boo in a news story or blog post.

It was nominated for this list by Jake O'Neill, editorial coordinator, CisionUK.

Video

• For recording video

7. FiLMiC Pro - £2.49

It is worth switching from the in-built video app on your iPhone to FilmicPro if you record footage regularly. It provides lots of manual controls, including white balance, an audio meter and GPS tagging.

It has been recommended in the past by Marc Settle, who trains BBC reporters in mobile reporting. It is worth following the five pointers at this link and watching the video - filmed entirely on an iPhone using FiLMiC Pro – to see what is possible.

• For editing video

8. 1st Video - £6.99

1st Video is made by VeriCorder, a company specialising in apps for journalists (you can see the other offerings here). Journalism.co.uk was first made aware of this app by BBC 5 Live reporter Nick Garnett when he blogged about it 18 months ago.

It is one of the more expensive apps in this list but it does give you an video editing suite in your pocket.

It takes a but of time to get used to the different gestures used for editing. You may find this guide on shooting and editing video with an iPhone useful.

• For livestreaming video

9. Bambuser - free

Bambuser, which is also included in our must-have list of Android apps, is an app which allows you to livestream video.

Nick Martin, north of England correspondent at Sky News, has used it, and it is regularly used by citizen journalists to share news, such as this footage from Egypt's Tahrir Square.

• For capturing multiple angles

10. Vyclone - free

Vyclone is an app at that allows ​up to four phones to record footage of the same event. It automatically stitches snippets of each separate recording together to form a multi-angled video.

This app was nominated as an 'app of the week for journalists' by journalism student Sam Kirwan (@Journoable on Twitter) as a great way of to gather footage of a protest or an event and tell that story.

Smartphone reporting specialist at BBC College of Journalism Marc Settle has blogged about it.
Social networks

• Twitter

11. Tweetbot - £1.99

If you are a Twitter-using journalist with an iPhone, this app is a must as it has some really handy functionality. You can follow Twitter lists and track conversations. And in one swipe and three taps you can even create a Storify of a conversation.

The app has various customisable buttons and tap actions. You can save tweets to Instapaper or another service and you can copy a tweet (particularly helpful if you are using a timeline from one account and want to tweet from another).

Tweetbot launched for Mac desktop last week and was hailed by Matthew Panzarino of The Next Web as "probably the last great Twitter client for Mac" and "powerful enough to replace Tweetdeck for some users". Due to Twitter restrictions, Tweetbot can only sell a certain number of Tweebot accounts. If you are a Mac user and have a spare £13.99 it is worth buying now.
Text

• For writing articles

12. Byword - £1.99

There is no shortage of text editors for iPhone and iPad but this one stands out as it allows you to easily sync documents with Dropbox or iCloud. You can also export via email.

Byword also allows Markdown, enabling those who know a few commands to write, preview and export as HTML.

• For liveblogging

13. CoverItLive - free (although you will need to pay for a CoverItLive account)

This liveblogging app allows you to post text, pictures and more. It is relatively easy to write short updates on an iPhone but one way of using it is to write text on a laptop and then add photos, audio and other multimedia content from an event using the app.

This liveblogging app was suggested by Benjamin Stevens, deputy editor, content development at Which? He said he has used it "to good effect when reporting on major tech announcements".

An alternative is ScribbleLive.

• For notes

14. Evernote - free

Evernote allows you to save photos, audio files, web links and notes and share them across all your devices. It is like "having a second brain", journalist Kim Townsend said when she nominated it for a Journalism.co.uk app of the week.

This app was suggested for this list by freelance journalist Gwyneth Dunsford who uses it "for writing scripts on the fly".

Newsgathering

• For keeping up with news from your niche

15. Reeder - £1.99

One way of keeping up with news published by other sources is via RSS. Reeder uses your feeds saved to Google Reeder and has apps for iPhone, iPad and Mac. You can create folders of feeds from sites that are key to your beat and then share or save news via a whole host of social platforms, including Delicious, App.net and Twitter.

And if you do not want to open Reeder to see what feeds have been published, add Push Reader (£1.49). This will give you push notifications for any feeds you want to stay on top off. The settings are flexible and allow you to switch of annoying sounds and to set "do not disturb" times.

Thank you to everyone who suggested apps, including: @jonhew, @cmcloutier @gwynduns, @MediaJake, @AndyMartindale, @StevensBenW, @ben_hr, @charlesmaggs, @MarcHindley, ‏@EJSham, @MarcSettle Have we missed a great iPhone app for mobile reporting? Leave us a comment in the box below.

Free daily newsletter

If you like our news and feature articles, you can sign up to receive our free daily (Mon-Fri) email newsletter (mobile friendly).