App for journalists: Curio, for turning text articles into audio files

Credit: Image by Luisella Planeta Leoni from Pixabay

What is it? Curio is an app which turns news articles from a variety of different organisations into an audio file for you to listen to at any time.

Price: £5.99 a month or £44.99 a year (after a one week free trial)

Devices: iOS and Android

How is it of use to journalists?

In a fast-paced news cycle, there is often not enough time to pour through the stories of the day and read the latest developments from around the world.

Curio handpicks content that it thinks you will be interested in and provides them in an audio format, perfect for when you are on the commute.

Once you have logged in and signed up, you are greeted by the ‘For You’ section - your personalised news feed made up of stories from a range of publications, including Bloomberg, the Guardian and The Economist.

If there is a certain type of story you are looking for, or if you want to read stories exclusively from one publication, the Discover section can help you in your search.

Here, you can see featured stories, a ‘charts list’ of most listened-to articles, as well as browse through a variety of different categories and publishers.

When you find a story you want to listen to, simply click on it and hit play.

Other features, such as skipping ahead, adjusting the play speed and liking an article, can be accessed when playing articles through ‘Now Playing’. 

To do this, click the three dots above an article and then select ‘Add to Queue’. Go to the Library section or the app, click Queue, and select Play Queue.

The article at the top of the queue will start playing and a bar along the bottom of the screen will appear when you leave the Queue. Click this, and you will find ‘Now Playing’.

Listeners can jump forwards or backwards 15 seconds by clicking either side of the pause/play button, adjust the play speed by clicking on the icon at the bottom left of the screen and like or dislike the article by clicking one of the two thumbs at the bottom of the screen.

To leave this screen and continue browsing the rest of the app, click the arrow icon at the top left of the screen. You will still be able to return to ‘Now Playing’, as the bar will remain along the bottom.

By swiping right on the Now Playing screen, you can also view your Queue and can easily rearrange the order by selecting the three horizontal lines icon on the article you want to move and moving it to a different place.

Want to stop articles from your queue playing one after another? In Settings, you can toggle this feature on and off.

Save the date: Newsrewired takes place on the 27 November at Reuters, London. Head to newsrewired.com for the full agenda and tickets

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).